Nej means nej - and not just in Sweden. Here in Britain, the anti-Europeans gloat and jump for joy, their many newspapers whooping that any euro referendum is now a duck as dead as a dodo. The Europe minister glumly records a bumptious Euro-sceptic MP bouncing up to him in Westminster mocking: "What's the Swedish for 'Good on yer, lads'?"  A fog of despair descends on pro-Europeans; it's all over for the foreseeable future. Gordon Brown has cut his team assessing the euro tests from 100 civil servants to a desultory 10. Clinging to a toehold of credibility inside the EU, the prime minister keeps up the charade that we may still soon join. But with the no-show of his promised euro roadshows, no one believes him. For the euro enthusiasts, the question is not what to do next, but what to think next. The chill Scandinavian wind sent shudders right across Europe. Can any government now be sure of winning a referendum on anything? At least six countries are bound to hold votes to confirm the new EU constitution: every nation needs to ratify, or the whole project falls. That would leave an ungovernable community of 25 countries, each with a veto, a recipe for stalemate. Late in the day, EU leaders are examining what has gone wrong. Why are citizens everywhere dangerously inclined to stick two fingers up at Brussels if given the chance?  When enthusiasts are driven back to pointing out that the EU has delivered the first ever 50-year period of total peace within its borders, you know they are indeed in trouble. Yeah, yeah, say the ungrateful post-war masses, sure 16,000 British boys died in just the first two days of the Somme offensive, but that was then. Right now the filthy French farmers - only 4% of the population earning only 2.3% of the country's GDP - have helped to wreck the World Trade Organisation negotiations, when most EU citizens wanted to open the gates to third world agricultural produce. The European Central Bank looks stubbornly anti-Keynesian in refusing to let countries borrow enough to pull themselves out of recession. Meanwhile, we EU citizens blush to find Silvio Berlusconi strutting the world stage as our president.  The one genuine outpouring of authentic Europe-wide, grassroots passion was the howl of opposition to the Iraq war and George Bush's White House. But there was no one to seize that moment and build a new European political identity.  Tony Blair was on the wrong side, plunging catastrophically across the Atlantic. President Chirac, conservative and nationalistic, failed to relinquish petty French interests that blocked a popular Europe-wide foreign policy. His old French insularity left him clinging to his handful of farmers instead of plunging into Cancun as an internationalist, challenging the Americans to do likewise.  Europe lost its chance to show the world a better model of globalisation than America's. To be sure, in 2006 some reform of the common agricultural policy (CAP) will help, but the British delegation was unable to protest loudly enough at what the rich west did, all for the sake of a puny 1.7% of EU GDP earned in farming.  Some wilder rightwingers such as David Heathcoat-Amory went on the stump around Sweden during the campaign, but it's hard to imagine it was him wot won it. The Swedes, after all, voted no for fear of reactionary Brussels economics undermining their social democratic spending. In Britain, most of the left sees Europe as a force for progress - winning better social and employment protection against the wishes of British governments. But this enthusiasm is mild. Europe is always a political also-ran, as is evident in Labour's appointing of six different Europe ministers in as many years. The blood is only stirred when provoked by Eurosceptic mania.  Political fire is all on the other side, where hatred of Brussels has swelled to monster proportions since 1989, filling the confusing void left in its demonology by the fall of Moscow. The evil empire is transfigured into a galloping federal superstate. Never mind that the entire EU government in Brussels has a civil service of just 23,000, compared with Whitehall's 480,000 (and fewer than Surrey county council). What's more, the new constitution has thrown out the famous Treaty of Rome trajectory towards an "ever closer union". And now it will require only a million EU citizens to sign a petition to bring a pressing question to the council, making people power easier.  How damaging will staying outside the euro be? Sweden voted no, even though its inward investment had halved since the euro's launch. Britain's inward investment from outside the EU has fallen horribly from the highest in the EU at 27% in 1998 to just 7% now.  Just more fiddled statistics, an unimpressed public suspects. But how bad do things have to be before people see with their own eyes a two-tier Europe taking off, with Britain left behind? The government dare not speak the truth (except in private). When Peter Hain this week told of the inward investment collapse, the Mail lammed him for bad-mouthing Britain.  The limping Britain in Europe campaign now needs to reform itself into a radical anti-government voice, not the pet of ministerial patronage. Time to lay into both Brown and Blair with full euro knuckledusters. Time to attack Brussels, too, and lead the charge for reform; it will never be credible to defend the inadequate status quo.  The European idea is magnificent, but pretending that current reality matches the rhetoric only heightens scepticism. Constitutions are dull - but real issues are not. So forget general principles, and campaign to send decision-making where it belongs pragmatically, according to whoever does it best. So they should be campaigning for third world aid - badly spent in Brussels - to return to nation states, but for Brussels to seize hold of compliance with Kyoto protocols, where nation states are failing shockingly.  Most pro-euro analysis of the Swedish disaster has focussed on how badly the campaign was fought - too establishment, too complacent, too late starting. But maybe the way the EU operates just isn't good enough to inspire trust, let alone enthusiasm. People can smell a conspiracy to cover up its faults among those who support it.  Lord Haskins yesterday joined a growing group of pro-euros with a suicidal tendency, suffering that dangerous vertigo that makes people fearful of falling want to jump. They advocate a big-bang, in-or-out referendum with a single vote for joining the euro, ratifying the constitution and staying in. Wiser heads say wait until the time is ripe - when the euro economy booms, when the CAP is dead, when Europe has a proper leader and a political sense of direction. It may be a little time yet. p.toynbee@guardian.co.uk  Classification Language: ENGLISH Subject: REFERENDUMS (90%); EUROPEAN UNION (90%); VOTERS & VOTING (77%); EURO (77%); RECESSION (75%); PRIME MINISTERS (74%); EUROPEAN UNION INSTITUTIONS (74%); HEADS OF STATE & GOVERNMENT (74%); VETO (74%); FRENCH PRESIDENTS (72%); INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC ORGANIZATIONS (71%); CIVIL SERVICES (70%); GROSS DOMESTIC PRODUCT (67%); ASSOCIATIONS & ORGANIZATIONS (65%); IRAQ WAR (62%); CENTRAL BANKS (61%); INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS (50%) Company: EUROPEAN CENTRAL BANK (84%); EUROPEAN CENTRAL BANK (84%); EUROPEAN UNION (84%); EUROPEAN UNION (84%) Organization: EUROPEAN UNION (84%); EUROPEAN UNION (84%); EUROPEAN UNION (84%); EUROPEAN UNION (84%) Industry: EURO (77%); CENTRAL BANKS (61%) Person: TONY BLAIR (58%); GORDON BROWN (58%); SILVIO BERLUSCONI (54%); GEORGE W BUSH (51%); JACQUES CHIRAC (50%) Geographic: BRUSSELS, BELGIUM (79%); ATLANTIC OCEAN (58%); EUROPE (97%); EUROPEAN UNION MEMBER STATES (94%); FRANCE (92%); UNITED KINGDOM (92%); SWEDEN (79%); IRAQ (79%); BELGIUM (79%); UNITED STATES (79%)