I came across this typically restrained piece by Melanie Phillips in the Daily Mail (don't worry, I don't make a habit of reading the Mail!). It appears that, aside from the usual diatribe, she has completely misunderstood a number of issues regarding a revised European treaty.

Aside from the usual bunkum about the treaty creating a new EU President (we already have an EU presidency which changes every six months - the treaty simply provides for a two-and-a-half year chair) she claims that merging the two posts of External Relations Commissioner and Council High Representative on Foreign Affairs, would mean the end of an independent British foreign policy! A new EU foreign affairs spokesperson would merely speak for the EU where there was a common position. She asks the question "what would happen if British foreign policy contradicted that of the EU". But, if Britain (or any country) objected, then there could be no common EU policy in the first place.

She recycles the tired Eurosceptic cliché that the EU is "anti-democratic" - conveniently ignoring the fact that the measures contained in a revised treaty would strengthen the role of the directly elected MEPs in the European Parliament (by making all EU legislation subject to approval by it and the Council of Ministers) and increasing the powers of legislative scrutiny by national parliaments. Besides, the EU is already the most democratically accountable of all the supranational organisations the UK is a member of including the WTO, NATO, IMF and World Bank, bodies which never seem to feature in her concerns about democracy.

Moreover, Phillips also reveals her own cynical double standards. She demands a referendum on a revised treaty only because it's the next best thing to a referendum on withdrawal from the EU.

I did chuckle when I read her description of the EU as "a failed, backward-looking project whose days are numbered"! In the words of Nobel peace prize winner John Hume, "the EU is the most successful example of conflict resolution in history", while Paddy Ashdown described it as "a political miracle". The EU is not perfect, but neither is any other political institution, and the reforms expected to be retained in a new treaty would enhance its effectiveness and its democratic accountability and help us to deliver the best policy results for our citizens on those matters when our countries are highly interdependent. If Melanie Phillips wants to see something that genuinely is "a failed and backward looking project", she should try reading her own columns.