The Lisbon Treaty is the latest step in a process which, though its conception can arguably be traced to the Treaty of Rome itself, was born at Maastricht. This process is one of removing what is truly of fundamental importance to capitalism – principally, the way in which it manages its economy – from the realm of an at least partially democratised politics.

This is, moreover, not an exclusively European process, but one which is global. As parliamentary institutions have spread following the collapse of authoritarian systems of ‘left’ and right, they have simultaneously been deprived of a range of powers once considered proper to them.

The nationalist right makes much of the transfer of powers from national to transnational institutions, from Dublin or London to Brussels, for example. Not sharing their ‘patriotic’ fantasies, I am far more concerned by the transfer of powers from institutions whose nature makes them responsive to popular sentiment, to those essentially immune to such pressures. Not only the European Union, but other regional bodies such as the North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement, and international institutions like the World Trade Organisation and the International Monetary Fund, have now narrowed policy choices available to national governments and parliaments to such an extent that ‘legitimate’ democratic pressure can no longer be brought to bear on the most important areas of policy.