Luxembourg’s premier, Jean-Claude Juncker, said Britain’s new prime minister, Gordon Brown, is right to hide the fact that the new EU treaty will mean “transfers of sovereignty.” He explained that he supports public debate on the treaty—just not in Britain, where voters would probably value their sovereignty above their membership in the EU.

Valéry d’Estaing, former French president and one of the architects of the failed EU constitution, has said the new treaty is really just a disguised version of the constitution, that the treaty “still contains all the key elements [of the constitution]” and that “all the earlier proposals will be in the new text, but will be hidden and disguised in some way.”

German Chancellor Angela Merkel agreed, saying, “The fundamentals of the constitution have been maintained in large part.” European Commissioner Margot Wallström went so far as to say the treaty is “essentially the same proposal as the old constitution.”

The real difference is that European leaders are trying to skirt the need for a referendum—instead simply adopting the treaty without the people’s support. This is especially pertinent in France and the Netherlands, where the constitution was rejected by referendum, and in Britain, where it was never put to referendum at all because leaders knew rejection was probable.

Britain’s voters haven’t been fooled: A poll found that 86 percent want a referendum on the treaty. But if it’s up to Prime Minister Brown, they won’t get it; he has said that Britain’s negotiating “red lines” were not broken at former Prime Minister Blair’s summit in June, so no referendum is necessary.

Britain’s time in the EU is winding down. Eventually, Britain will either leave because it is asked to make one concession too many, or be forced to leave by Europe because the British made one concession too few. One thing is certain: More British people know their sovereignty is at issue now; if the people are given a choice, Britain’s participation in the EU will end. Disturbingly, at the present time no one plans to give them that choice.