There may be a more unsettling political prospect than Tony Blair as president of Europe but for the moment I really can't think of one.

Imagine that rictus grin, that crack-jack-rabbit energy, that insatiable hunger for money channelled into the pomp and circumstance of the office of leader of the European Union.

The salaries, the flunkies, the sycophantic welcomes around the world! Irwin Stelzer claims that too many of us hate Tony Blair for what he did: making the Labour party electable, bringing down Saddam Hussein, bouncing along in George W Bush's slipstream, taking us to war in Afghanistan and so on. I don't hate Tony Blair for any of these. I don't hate him at all. I find him morbidly fascinating, as fascinating as those perma-tanned American televangelists who promise eternal salvation but are then revealed to have been spending their spare time not praying but "saving" fallen women in the nearest motel.

The problem is not that Blair might be the next president of Europe, but that the office will exist at all. The post will be created by the Lisbon treaty, if and when it is finally ratified by the Eurosceptic Czech president Vaclav Klaus.

Klaus is refusing to sign the Lisbon treaty, arguing that it will lead to a European super-state, which is correct. In return he is being vilified as a dinosaur, reactionary and worse by Europe's press and politicians. The Germans are even calling for him to be impeached by the Czechs, forgetting perhaps that the days when Berlin decided who rules in Prague are long over – at least in theory. In truth Klaus is not the most attractive politician. He is an arrogant, cranky misanthrope who does not believe that climate change is man-made. But that does not mean he is entirely wrong about Lisbon. There simply is no popular mandate for the treaty, even less for the idea of a federal European super-state. Every time voters have been asked whether they wish to move towards a European super-state, where national sovereignty is stealthily elided until it no longer exists they have said "no". The French and Dutch said no in 2005. We in Britain would almost certainly have said no if Blair had given us the referendum that Labour promised. The Irish said no, at least until they were virtually forced into saying "yes" earlier this month.

Yet somehow, this process of Britain's absorption into a kind of Euro-mush continues unabated, as it has done for the last decade or so. Where has the left been in this debate? Either silent or acquiescing in the hazy consensus that Europe is a Good Thing. In many respects it is: open borders, free trade, the near impossibility of war between EU member states are indeed positive developments. But thanks to Euro-spin, an apparently unstoppable centrifugal force, our vital, historical values of national sovereignty, accountability, governance by locally elected representatives who sit in a national parliament are now so corroded as to be almost dirty words. How did this happen? There is nothing reactionary about demanding a sovereign national democracy. We have fought civil wars, world wars and executed a king for the right to decide our own destiny through our elected representatives. So please, let's not have Tony Blair as president of Europe. Let's not have anyone at all.