Completing his term, outgoing UK Prime Minister Tony Blair gave the European Union the biggest present he could: a whopping chunk of British sovereignty, along with the groundwork for further EU-British integration. Yet, all may not go exactly as integration enthusiasts hope. Opposition to the EU is growing in Britain, and Blair’s giveaway may be the spark that ignites a referendum over the issue.

Triumphant but noticeably tired, Blair emerged from the grueling EU summit declaring that a new European treaty—one that protected Britain’s vital interests—had been secured.

Likening Britain’s vital interests to “red lines” which could not be crossed, Blair affirmed that “[t]he four essential things we in the UK required to protect our position have all been obtained.” Those four issues were labor and social legislation; social security; police, legal and judicial powers; and foreign and defense policy independence.

However, within hours, Blair’s “red lines” began getting blurry. Some might even contend the lines barely existed at all.

The UK originally insisted that EU ambitions to develop its own common foreign and security policy not supersede Britain’s own interests.

On the surface, it seemed Blair had held fast on this point, insisting that a “declaration” be inserted into the treaty footnotes stating that the “responsibilities of member states” would not be impinged upon. However, a “declaration” has limited or no legal power; it merely expresses a political aspiration. Blair succeeded in inserting nice-sounding, non-legally binding language with little actual enforceability. As UK Shadow Foreign Secretary William Hague said, “When you examine the small print, it is clear [Blair’s] so-called safeguards have no legal guarantees at all.”

As a result of the summit, the EU now has the authority to appoint what amounts to a foreign minister with teams of envoys and embassies, which will almost certainly “undermine the freedom of maneuver for [Britain’s] own foreign secretary,” warned Neil O’Brien, director of the think tank Open Europe.

Blair had fought to reduce the power entrusted to this high representative’s 120 diplomatic delegations, but came out of lunch on Friday willing to compromise on the matter in an apparent attempt to preserve his other red lines.

Thanks to the new treaty, the EU now has, for the first time, the legal status for the 27-member Union to sign binding foreign policy treaties as a single entity.

British conservatives were not happy. “I hope the small print of the new treaty does not put the UK on a slippery slope to a Euro Foreign Office,” Timothy Kirkhope, the leader of European Parliament conservatives, said. Other critics said the new EU office and its corps would indeed eventually replace the foreign policy wishes of London and other governments with those of Brussels.

Blair did secure a special opt-out for British courts from the new European bill of rights. But this victory is also a tenuous one, since European judges are saying the opt-out could be subject to a legal challenge.

Further, Britain surrendered its veto power in more than 40 distinct regions of policy including the vital areas of energy, space, immigration and transportation.

The new treaty also reveals that Britain has quietly agreed to give up its blocking vote on the creation of a European police force and a European public prosecutor’s office, which would in theory override Britain’s criminal justice system.

According to UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage, “The real achievement of this summit … is that the European Union itself has taken a significant step forward to becoming the global superpower that it always sought to be.”

As information about the new EU treaty and the loss of Britain’s national prerogative has come to light, more than a few feathers have been ruffled back on the home front. With a European bureaucracy increasingly perceived as burdensome, and a public that largely fears the loss of national autonomy, the UK-EU integration issue could easily jump to the forefront of national politics.

Britain has long shown reluctance to surrender matters considered integral to its sovereignty to the EU. How London relates with other nations is a sovereign matter in the eyes of the average Briton, who feels stronger about British independence than even his government does. London has been wary to avoid public referendums on EU issues for fear of defeat.

Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry has re-emphasized Herbert Armstrong’s prediction that Britain will not only dig in its heels against EU integration, but will eventually leave—or be forced to leave—the Union altogether. The concessions Tony Blair has just made could bring this issue of British sovereignty roaring to the forefront of concerns among British voters. With polls showing British support for the EU at only around 39 percent, it appears to be only a matter of time before Britain finds itself outside the Union.