THE reason why Tony Blair and Robin Cook launched their offensive against Britain's "Eurosceptics" is quite simple -- they are trying to hide the fact that their policy on Europe is facing a crisis of the first magnitude.

Indeed, as they go off to Nice to sign the latest European Union Treaty, Blair will be acutely aware that what his European partners are now asking him to give away has put him on the spot like nothing else in his premiership.

It is a blatant attempt to take the EU another giant step towards a single supra-national state.

This is finally calling the bluff of all British politicians who have told us our involvement is really little more than a trading arrangement, a matter of jobs and prosperity.

On the continent, what they call "the European project" is far more than that.

It was always a long-term visionary idea to create, step by step, what Winston Churchill more than 50 years ago called a "United States of Europe", comparable with the United States of America. Churchill never saw any place for Britain in that new state, since he saw quite a separate destiny for Britain and her Commonwealth.

The wrath of the British people when they wake up to how far they have been deceived could be enough to bring the Labour Party to a very nasty and humiliating end forever.

Roger William Livesey,

Clayton East Conservative,

Briery Hey,

Clayton Brook.