British Eurosceptics, who let us not forget, are a highly organised and well financed network, are working themselves up into a frenzy over the European Council discussions on replacing the Constitutional Treaty with a pragmatic set of amendments to the current European treaties.

The Eurosceptic press is full of articles and leaders spitting bile about Europe, and claiming that “Blair is just hours from betraying Britain” (Express), “Blair to surrender” (Telegraph), that Blair could “sell us down the river to the faceless EU politicians and bureaucrats who run Europe. There is no middle road at this travelling road show of snake oil salesman and three card tricksters..” (Sun)

Charming!

Tory politicians are equally at it. Hague contributes to the Sun’s diatribe, while Heathcoat Amory tells outright fibs when he says that “80 percent of our laws are imposed by unelected bureaucrats in Brussels”. He knows perfectly well that “bureaucrats” don’t make European laws – ministers from national governments and elected MEPs do – and in any case the figure of 80 percent of our laws coming from Europe is contradicted by the House of Commons library estimates of nine percent.

The Telegraph reports “EU reform chaos as Blair and Brown fail to agree” while the Financial Times reports the opposite “Brown and Blair find rare unity on defending 'red lines' “.

Some pro-European voices are allowed a few lines in some papers:

• “Unless Europe gets its act together, the world will continue to ignore it (writes Timothy Garton Ash for the Guardian)

• "Come 2009, when the US gets a new president, the EU must be ready to speak in a voice that will actually be listened to.". "The presidency's reduced package of functionally necessary institutional changes is a pragmatic, not an ideological response to the present impasse. We can see nothing in the German presidency's approach to these issues that conflicts in any way with British national interests." (Letter in the Financial Times from Lords Dykes, Hannay of Chiswick, Kerr of Kinlochard, and Peter Sutherland – none of them Labour, by the way).

• "There is no doubt that some provisions of the old constitutional treaty were misconceived, but there are other measures which should be retained in a new treaty, which are sensible responses to the EU's expansion from 15 to 27 member states in the last three years. The proposals to end the rotating presidency, to merge the two foreign affairs roles, to reform voting weights in the European Council and to give national parliaments a greater role in the decision-making process are among the measures that should attract support from those who genuinely wish to see the EU work better." (Letter from Lord Brittan of Spennithorne QC, Mr Roger Carr, Mr Guy Dawson, Mr Niall FitzGerald, Sir Philip Hampton, Mr Vijay Patel, Sir Mike Rake, Mr Roland Rudd, Mr Bryan Sanderson, Ms Rosemary Thorne, Mr Bill Thomas, Lord Tugendhat).

But the Eurosceptic papers appear not to want to publish dissenting letters or even factual corrections. We are in for a battle between the unelected press barons and the elected government on an issue on which the former have prepared the ground for years with their relentless depiction of the Europe as akin to the bubonic plague.