Like the demise of Mark Twain, rumours of the death of the European Union have been greatly exaggerated.

The implications of yesterday's French referendum on the EU constitution were amply summed up in advance by Luxembourg's Jean-Claude Juncker, the current EU president, when he declared that if the French said 'oui' European integration would proceed, and if they said 'non' European integration would proceed.

That's what the EU means by 'consulting the people'. That's why France's President Chirac threatened that if the French voted no, they would be made to vote again until they said yes. No doubt such a fate will befall the Dutch if they vote 'nee' in their own referendum this Wednesday, unless they do so by an overwhelming majority.

In any event, this whole crisis has been more about political momentum rather than any possible real change in direction. For regardless of the constitution, the reality is that the countries of the EU are already the helpless captives of an all-encompassing, anti-democratic bureaucracy with a life of its own.

Much of the constitution was always going to be imposed upon us anyway through the seemingly endless wrinkles in existing EU treaties. Indeed, the creation of an EU diplomatic service and the harmonisation of criminal justice are already well under way.

In other words, nothing so trivial as the will of the people would ever be allowed to derail the EU project, which has come to define the world view for a whole class of politicians, bureaucrats and lawyers who have governed the nations of Europe for a generation.

Nevertheless, the French referendum campaign dramatically exposed the profound fault lines and contradictions in the whole EU project. The passions unleashed by the constitution relate not just to this treaty but, much more fundamentally, to the European dream itself.

Millions of European voters have grasped that that the EU project is a swindle. It was sold to them on the false prospectus that it would bring prosperity. Instead, they find their countries are crippled by economic sclerosis.

The problem, however, is that many do not understand why this has happened. Many French voters who voted 'non' did so for the wrong reasons. They believed that the constitution would foist upon them Anglo-Saxon market disciplines and expose them to the chill winds of competition from foreign companies and workers.

Ironically, this position is the diametric opposite of the British 'no' voters, who rightly fear that further integration with Europe would destroy our economic advantage and leave us similarly crippled.

What even the French 'non' voters don't seem to grasp is that the whole EU edifice rests on a set of fantasy foundations. The first is the premise that the nation states of Europe have common interests.

In fact, they have rather more irreconcilable social, political and cultural differences -- and their economic interests lie in being in competition with each other, the very thing the EU is in business to stifle.

The second great myth is that the EU can become a rival global power to the US: the social welfare state versus the unbridled free-market. Euro-fanatics are so wrapped up in this infantile hostility that they have failed to notice that the world has moved on.

India and China are fast becoming major competitors; the developing markets are in Asia and the far east; and newcomers to the EU from eastern Europe are American economic wannabes. The last thing they want to do is emulate stagnant, high-unemployment economies such as Germany, where voter revolt has caused beleaguered Prime Minister Gerhard Shroeder to advance the date of the general election.

The third fantasy is that the nation state is the cause of war and only the supra-national EU has kept the peace in Europe since World War 11.

This is the most dangerous rubbish of all. Peace in Europe was guaranteed by NATO and the Atlantic alliance. Indeed, it is when self-government is suppressed and national identity threatened that people turn violent.

In those circumstances, they would also be far less keen to fight against any enemy threatening their freedom -- because they would no longer have any significant freedom to defend. As the MEP Daniel Hannan has argued, the main threat to freedom comes from supra-national tyrannies -- communism, Nazism, Islamic totalitarianism -- to which only the nation state can offer any proper defence.

Yet the EU is fundamentally hostile to the very idea of the nation state. Not only is it emasculating national powers but its erosion of national borders has encouraged the mass movement of peoples across the continent, the very thing fuelling the pan-European voter revolt.

The French are the driving force behind the European supra-national ideal. Yet when faced with the inevitable consequences — the arrival of millions of foreigners who threaten not only French jobs but French national identity -- they don't like it.

The wholly erroneous belief that the nation state is a recipe for war, and that instead a supra-national government should impose laws and values to which everyone signs up and which will spread harmony and goodwill in place of conflict, is precisely what is embodied in the EU constitution.

Its extension of EU powers would take away what remains of our ability to govern ourselves. It would deprive us of control over finance, foreign policy, defence, taxation, social security, criminal justice, immigration and a host of other policies. The wholesale transfer of power to a brand-new pseudo-state would reduce Parliament to the status of Westminster regional council. As such, it sounds a death knell for democracy.

This has never worried the French because the EU is quintessentially a French project. France has always been in the driving seat telling other states what to do and rigging the EU rules to suit itself. Other countries also do not share these concerns because they have a shaky historical attachment to democracy and liberty.

This is why the objections to the constitution by the British people are so very different and so very emphatic. Despite the lies that have been told about it being merely a 'tidying-up exercise' -- a comic counterpoint to President Chirac's hysterical claims that a 'no' vote would destroy the EU -- the British understand that what is at stake is our unique culture of liberty, independence and democracy.

A great fissure in the world has opened up between those who believe in the nation state and those who believe it must be superseded by supra-national institutions, which do away with a nation's identity expressed through its own laws and values.

The EU constitution represents a great leap forward in that rolling revolution. But whatever the final fate of that particular treaty, the fanatical and corrupt elite that drives the EU onwards will not give up. Through bullying, lies and intimidation they will continue to deprive us of our ancient liberties, slice by salami slice.

However the political aftermath of the French and Dutch votes plays out in the short term in Britain and in Europe, the fact remains that the UK now needs to have a full and frank debate about its place in a European Union that presents such a clear threat to our constitutional traditions and national identity.

The death of the EU might have been exaggerated -- but the danger of the death of British democracy can hardly be overstated.