DEATH TO EU OFFICIALS!

Two years from now, the European constitution will be in force - certainly de facto and probably de jure, too. Never mind that 15 million Frenchmen and five million swag-bellied Hollanders voted against it.

The Eurocrats have worked out a deft way of getting around them. Here's how they'll do it.

First, they will shove through as many of the constitution's contents as they can under the existing legal framework - a process they had already begun even before the referendums.

Around 85 per cent of the text can, with some creative interpretation, be implemented this way.

True, there are one or two clauses that will require a formal treaty amendment: a European president to replace the system whereby the member nations take it in turns to chair EU meetings; a new voting system; legal personality for the Union.

These outstanding items will be formalised at a miniature inter-governmental conference, probably in 2007. There will be no need to debate them again: all 25 governments accepted them in principle when they signed the constitution 17 months ago.

We shall then be told that these are detailed and technical changes, far too abstruse to be worth pestering the voters with.

The EU will thus have equipped itself with 100 per cent of the constitution, but without having held any more referendums.

Don't take my word for it: listen to what the EU's own leaders are saying. Here is Wolfgang Schüssel, Chancellor of Austria and the EU's current president: "The constitution is not dead."

Here is Angela Merkel, leader of Europe's most powerful and populous state: "Europe needs the constitution… We are willing to make whatever contribution is necessary to bring the constitution into force."

Here is Dominique de Villepin, who, in true European style, has risen to the prime ministership of France without ever having run for elected office: "France did not say no to Europe."

And, on Tuesday, our own Europe minister, Douglas Alexander, repeatedly refused to rule out pushing ahead with the bulk of the text without a referendum.

For the purest statement of the Eurocrats' contempt for the voters, however, we must turn to the constitution's author, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing.

Here is a man who, with his exquisite suits and de haut en bas manner, might be said to personify the EU: so extraordinarily distinguished, as Mallarmé remarked in a different context, that when you bid him bonjour, he makes you feel as though you'd said merde.

"Let's be clear about this," pronounced Giscard a couple of weeks ago. "The rejection of the constitution was a mistake that will have to be corrected."

He went on to remind his audience that the Danish and Irish electorates had once been presumptuous enough to vote against a European treaty, but that no one had paid them the slightest attention.

The EU is proceeding as if the constitution were already in force. Most of the institutions and policies that it would have authorised are being enacted anyway: the External Borders Agency, the European Public Prosecutor, the External Action Service, the Charter of Fundamental Rights, the European Defence Agency, the European Space Programme.

Born out of a reaction against the Second World War, and the plebiscitary democracy that had preceded it, the EU is based on the notion that "populism" (or "democracy", as you and I call it) is a dangerous thing.

Why does anyone think the EU is democratic if they just ignore what the people want? It might be time for a couple of these Europhiles to get their head bashed in. Once these idiots realise that they have to obey the will of the people or get their head smashed in more of them will get the message. Yes I am advocating extreme violence and MURDER against anyone on the EU payroll. If they don't do what we say we, the people can beat them until they are either dead or in a coma. I mean, who do these people think they are?

I like many others are sick of our elected (and unelected) officials deciding what happens to our country when we vote against it happening. It's time some people died. Death or extreme violence is the only thing these people understand and once some die they will get the message. If they dont get the message they will have to die too.