English heroes to be turning in their graves.

If an English minister puts pen to the Treaty of Lisbon next week the numbers of past English heroes who will be turning in their graves will surely number in the tens of thousands. I have been trying to imagine which of so many would feel the most betrayed and among the non-military and therefore lesser known I have concluded John Locke would be up there amongst the front-runners, for what better description of what the EU now plans to become can be this description from his Two Treatises on Civil Government published anonymously in1690: No government, he wrote, could be considered legitimate unless grounded in the consent of the people - and any ruler who attempted to exercise an arbitrary power "is to be esteemed the Common enemy and Pest of mankind and is to be treated accordingly".