I'M off to Brussels again today, with the Prime Minister, to negotiate a new constitutional treaty - or set of rules - for the European Union.

I can't say that this is an issue likely to be uppermost in the minds of people in my Blackburn constituency, and I can't recall anyone raising it with me during the recent local and European election campaign. But it is an issue which is important for Britain's - and Blackburn's - future in Europe.

I ought to say at this point that I blame no one whose heart does not quicken with excitement at the thought of long and detailed legal discussions about protocols, articles and sub-clauses. This, after all, has been what much of the last 12 months has been about, although as a lawyer it probably does more for me than for most.

But it is a process which has been of critical importance, not least because we are at the edge of achieving something which British governments have been trying to do ever since we joined the Common Market in 1973, namely to establish once and for all that this unique European club is not some sort of slippery slope towards a superstate but a union of sovereign nation states who co-operate together in certain areas to increase our collective power.

This, of course, is not the message that those who would have Britain leave the EU - costing thousands of jobs in East Lancashire - want to hear. For them, Europe is full of power-crazed bureaucrats who are desperate to run our country, and no reform or change can alter that unshakeable belief. But I don't believe that most people across the country believe that it is in Britain's national interests to withdraw.

Don't get me wrong, however, I'm not saying that the EU is perfect - far from it. Even people who would never support British withdrawal can feel that the EU is too remote and interferes too much in those issues which are best left to individual nation states. But I have to say that many of my equivalents in Europe are busy enough running their own countries to be trying to get their hands on running ours.

And no countries are more hostile to the idea of a European superstate than those from the eight nations of Eastern and Central Europe which joined the EU in May. Having spent decades trying to escape such Soviet domination, they are not going to sign up to a different form of supranational control now. But it is their entry into the EU which has highlighted the need for long overdue reforms in the way the Union does its business - and that's what this new Treaty is all about.

The great irony is that for all the bluster of anti-Europeans - and they were on display in Parliament yesterday - this Treaty provides many of the things which they have long called for.

There will be more power to national governments, new measures to allow the British Parliament to block measures from the European Commission; and even simplified means by which countries can leave the EU.

Even if we do get a treaty, I doubt very much that people will ever learn to love the detailed intricacies of the EU .