However unpopular the EU may have become, not just in Britain but all across Europe, we are stuck with this weird political construct, which now rules over our lives to a far greater extent than most people are aware of.

One of the subtlest strategies employed by the EU, as it has gradually taken over more and more power from national governments, has been the way it has left each country's national institutions in place.

Monarchies and presidencies, national parliaments, civil services and legal systems have all been left standing, looking outwardly as if not very much has changed.

Yet over the decades they have all been gradually hollowed out from within.

Today, over vast areas of each country's national life, the power to decide policies and make laws no longer lies in national capitals. It has been transferred to our new 'supranational' centre of government in Brussels.

And the clever thing is how successfully most of this has been kept out of sight.......

Step by step we have seen our politicians handing over to this weird new system of government control over almost every aspect of our national life, from the power to decide who can come to live and work in Britain to the way our judges now have to interpret the law in our courts.

What in fact we have witnessed over the past 50 years, has been in effect an immense, slow-motion coup d'etat.

Our power to govern ourselves has been stealthily handed over to an entirely new kind of 'supranational' government, over which we no longer have any meaningful democratic say.

Therein lies the real triumph of that breathtakingly ambitious 'project' which was set in train by the Treaty of Rome 50 years ago this weekend.

Although half a century later it no longer enjoys the support of even half the 490 million people who must now live under it, it seems there is now nothing we can do to change it.

www Ukip Uncovered