In The Times letters page on 17 June (no longer online), George Guise is one of many who are now moaning that, without the new EU Constitution, we remain lumbered with the currently unreformed treaties.

Isn't this something they might have thought about before they opposed this useful package of reforms?

Anyway, the four “immediate objectives” he seeks are based on four incorrect premises. First, despite what he thinks, there is no rule preventing the repeal of existing directives. Second, both the European Parliament and ministers in the Council have the right to request the Commission to bring forward proposals. Third, social policy is already a matter for the governments of member states, except on those few subjects where they agree to make decisions jointly at European level. Fourthly, EU law already has primacy over national law – and rightly so, since there would be no point agreeing common rules with our neighbours if each country could then ignore those agreements back home.

Rather than inventing non-existent problems which are untouched by the constitution anyway, europhobes could better focus their energies on how to make our enlarged Union work more effectively, but with greater democratic accountability. After all, that was the intention behind the constitutional treaty they were so quick to rubbish.