The publication last week in Brussels of the first official English text of the EU treaty confirms what everyone except Gordon Brown and the Foreign Office has been saying - that the new 277-page treaty is almost exactly the same as the old constitution. However, amid the dawning realisation that the attempt to ram
through this treaty in 10 weeks is an immense new EU power grab, one crucial feature has attracted little notice - not least because to grasp it one must put together a series of articles scattered through the text.

In effect, the new treaty formally sets up the body known as the European Council as the government of Europe. It was the European Council which in June took an unprecedented step, not only deciding the treaty's text in advance but issuing a "mandate" that scarcely a word can be changed by that intergovernmental conference which is to present it for final signature in October.

The first point to note is that this treaty for the first time formally includes the European Council among "the Union's institutions" (Article 9). The European Council is not to be confused with the Council of Ministers (which has lately, very confusingly, renamed itself "the Council of the European Union"). It was originally set up in 1974 as a series of regular informal get-togethers between heads of government, as suggested by Jean Monnet, the mastermind behind the entire "European project", although he called it "the provisional government of Europe".

Since then these meetings of the European Council (still often misleadingly referred to as "summits") have become arguably the most important engine of the EU's political integration. But only now is the council being formally incorporated into the EU's structure. This is not least significant since, as the new treaty makes clear, when the heads of government meet in council they are no longer to represent their own countries. Like the members of all other "Union institutions", their first loyalty will now be to the EU. To "promote its values, advance its objectives, serve its interests" takes precedence over any national loyalty.

Turn back to Article 3 of the new treaty, which sets out the "objectives of the Union", and we see that it has been extended since the draft constitution. It is now drawn so widely that there is virtually nothing which cannot be regarded as an EU objective, and the council's prime function is to promote those objectives. As this and other parts of the treaty make clear, the Union will have power to shape and decide policy in almost every field, from defence and foreign affairs to how national economies should be run.

Furthermore, if the union wishes to take any powers not specifically authorised by the treaty, it will be able to do so under a new version of Article 308. Until now this applied only to measures needed to promote the "common market", but its new wording amounts to a blank cheque. It will be allowed new powers over anything it wants, in accordance with those all-embracing "objectives of the union". One of the biggest potential bombshells is hidden away in Article 262, which says that, by decision of the European Council, the EU "may establish new categories of own resources". In other words, it will have the power to levy its own taxes.

What all this amounts to is that the European Union finally wishes to set itself up as the supreme government of Britain and 26 other countries, with unlimited powers over every aspect of our lives: a government we cannot dismiss and which is unaccountable. It is nothing less than a complete coup d'etat. And Gordon Brown wishes to see this imposed on us without allowing us a referendum, in direct breach of a promise on which he was elected, and now on the basis of the transparent lie that it has no bearing on our constitutional rights. It should be enough to blow the minds of everyone in Britain.