At the heart of the Tories' apparent objection to more powers being transferred to the EU lies William Hague's assertion that "national government [is] the linchpin of democratic consent". This is an issue that also lies at the heart of the EU's problem - because the EU's very existence is an acknowledgement that national governments and the nation state are insufficient in and of themselves to tackle many of the issues of the modern world.
Now more than ever, with growing concerns about globalisation, cross-border crime, immigration, transnational terrorism and climate change, how can an individual nation state - especially an individual state as comparatively small as any of the EU's members - really have any impact?
Yet the problem with Hague's assertion goes even deeper, because it relies on a false premise that all too many people take for granted: that nation states are somehow a sensible unit of governance.
Why, in the UK, are all the big decisions taken in Westminster? Historical accident, nothing more. Over the course of several centuries, more and more power has transferred to London from the provinces as parliament gradually claimed more and more power from the crown, and in turn asserted its will more and more on the various counties and countries that make up the UK. In the last century, in turn, we've seen more and more power transfer from parliament as a whole to the executive - a body, much like the European Commission, that is not directly elected, but from which most legislation stems.
But if you were starting from scratch, would a centralised, national decision-making body really be the best to tackle the vastly differing needs of the various parts of the UK?
Within recent memory the situation in the former mining regions of the north and that in the affluent communter-belts of the south have been at least as far apart as are the current situations in, say, Romania and France. Why let a bunch of well-paid politicians sitting on plush leather benches in London take decisions over the regeneration of run-down pit towns, when the vast majority can have no idea what it is to live in such conditions, and so no idea what is needed? Most MPs know no more of what it's like to be an unemployed ex-shipbuilder in Glasgow or inhabitant of a Welsh village than they do what it is to be an impoverished olive farmer in fire-ravaged Greece - so why is a Westminster MP in any better a position to make a judgement than a bureaucrat or MEP in Brussels or Strasbourg?
Labour's drive to devolution and regional assemblies over the last decade has been an acknowledgement of this problem, just as has the EU's increasing emphasis on subsidiarity - itself a similar recognition that some decisions are best taken as locally as possible.
The nation state is a useful unit of governance for some issues, undoubtedly. But county, borough or parish councils are far more appropriate for others - just as an international or supranational level is far better for the really big issues. But even then there are problems...
I live in a relatively affluent part of London and, despite being a lowly freelance hack, am relatively well-off by the standards of the country as a whole. In terms of my concerns and needs, I surely have more in common with others from a similar socio-economic background - be they in Birmingham, Edinburgh, Paris, Rome or Berlin - than I do with someone from a poorer inner-city or rural area - be that in Moss Side, Brixton, County Durham, Romania, Portugal or Greece.
But even my own parliamentary constituency includes one of the richest, safest areas of London - full of 4x4s and parents who call their children things like Jocasta - as well as one of the poorest and most crime-ridden - where knife, gun and drug-related crime is a daily concern. Yet everyone within this constituency is represented by the same MP, who has to balance all these competing local needs and concerns in Westminster while also trying to get a picture of the needs of the country as a whole.
That's a constituency with a population of a few tens of thousands of people, covering an area of a few square miles, and it's hard enough to get decent representation of all the issues - why should a country of several thousand square miles and almost 60 million people be the best unit of governance, "the linchpin of democratic consent"?
If you accept this analysis, where does democracy fit in? It's nowhere near as simple as Hague's snappy phrase would like to suggest. Belief in the nation state as an ideal unit is as much a flawed, ideological position of faith as is the old "europhile" desire to create a "United States of Europe" - it certainly doesn't come from a rational, dispassionate assessment of where decisions should best be taken.
If we could all accept that premise, then maybe we could finally get to a stage where, rather than going on about lost vetoes and Brussels overriding Westminster, we could all consider precisely where would be best to have political power concentrated for what particular issues. Then, and only then, will we be able to tell where the real linchpin of democratic consent lies.
Democracy as the rule of the majority is all well and good, but when the pool is made up of tens of millions as with most nation states, there are surely simply too many minoritites, too many competing concerns to allow a genuine majority to emerge. Why else was Labour able to retain such a large parliamentary majority at the last election with the votes of just 22% of the electorate?
