The first time I felt how serious things were was in Brussels at the beginning of the century. I was taking part in a conference organised by a few eurosceptic MEPs in cooperation with one or two organisations of similar ilk. Among the speakers were Daniel Hannan (who warned about "the dictatorshpip of the extreme centre"), Jens-Peter Bonde (one of the key people behind the event), Roger Helmer (brilliant) and David Trimble. There was an odd ex-prime minister or former cabinet minister, too. Most of them expressed concerns about what the Union was doing, the power it was accumulating and the vision it was pursuing. There was a small federalist contingent that included German MEP, Jo Leinen. When he took the floor he had no time at all for debating issues or discussing particular points. He went straight to the heart of the problem, sending shivers of first shock and then horror down my spine. He simply said: "There is no alternative".
In a second I understood (what many others, especially in the UK had done very early on) that the whole venture wasn't just a bungling project that was going unravel on its own, so to speak, sooner or just a bit later, as I feared, and the only question was how soon and at what financial cost. Jo Leinen made it plain to me then that the project was to federalise Europe under Germany and it wasn't what Germany hoped to persuade the others to do - it was what Germany had decided to do, come high water or...
(and it's on its way now; actually it's landed on the Greek and Spanish shores yet.)
PS During one of the breaks I chatted to some British participants. One of them (Mr Marriott, I recall; tall, with impressive hair and wearing an unusually long fur coat, like a former rock star) looked around the huge foyer of the European Parliament building and said: "Only one thing interests me: when will we begin to take it all down?"
