Posted Sunday, June 1, 2003; 14.38BST
Both the euro and Giscard's Convention are amplifying this ambivalence. For France and Germany, founders of the European Union, the progressive growth of its institutions is not only uncontroversial, but inherently popular: a bulwark against future carnage and an instrument to magnify their national power. But for that very reason, a good chunk of British voters distrust the E.U. as basically a French-German cabal. Especially because Britain's economy for several years has been chugging along nicely compared to the Continent's, Sparrow says British opinion sees the E.U. as a vehicle for Continentals "sneakily trying to get what they didn't get in World War II. The feeling is very strong that they actually want to come over and rule Britannia," by harmonizing taxes, imposing labor regulations that will sap competitiveness, and lumping the Continent's underfunded pensions with Britain's relatively healthy ones. "Any harmonization tends to be perceived as a downward harmonization, to the lowest common denominator, or as contrary to the interests of [Britain]," observes a survey prepared in 2001 for the European Commission. France's refusal to reform the Common Agricultural Policy, its ongoing boycott of British beef long after the E.U. declared it free of mad-cow disease, and of course Iraq have all added to the sense that Europe is a one-way street. According to an April MORI poll, 55% of British voters consider France, fulcrum of the E.U., "our least reliable ally."

These animosities are compounded by ignorance about how Europe functions. According to a 2002 Eurobarometer survey, the British know less than any other member country about the workings of the E.U. Trust in all political institutions has sagged in the U.K. in the last 20 years, and Brussels seems particularly remote and unaccountable. According to the 2001 study for the European Commission, there's a perception in Britain of "a sprawling, inefficient, spendthrift bureaucracy, and a general suspicion of the existence of illegal benefits and payments, and corruption."

A main aim of the new constitution is precisely to make Europe more transparent and comprehensible, but it's hard to keep this big picture in mind amidst the blizzard of clauses tinkering with qualified majority voting and rebalancing the powers of the Commission and the Council. Grant believes that no matter how the wrangling over the constitution turns out, the E.U. "will remain complicated and very hard to love."

And that creates an opportunity for the Conservatives to use Europe as a hammer against Labour. The Tories will strenuously oppose the constitution. Ancram calls it a "Rubicon issue," because he sees in its fine print a collection of assaults on national independence "that move Europe across the line from being an association of sovereign states to being what we call a superstate." Blair will try to paint this stance as a stalking horse for what he insists is the Tories' real ambition, to pull out of the E.U. altogether — a charge that Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith calls "a big lie." The Conservatives have walked into the trap before of letting their distrust of the E.U. look more theological than rational. But British voters distrust Brussels too, and more importantly, they distrust what their government tells them about it.

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	New Europe, Old Economy [Jun. 2, 2003 ] Poland is America's new best friend. But the country is also in deep distress The Plan That Fell To Earth [May 5, 2003] Giscard unfurls a new E.U. blueprint, and the smaller states see red A Week in Hell [Mar. 24, 2003] At the precipice of war, facing mutiny at home, Tony Blair stays cool What If They Say No? [Dec. 16, 2002] Thought European Union enlargement was a done deal? Not yet. Search all issues of TIME Magazine