The government, the British one, has invited ideas for a slogan. That should be fun. Possibly inspired by a Prime Minister worrying over origins, identity and the many problems facing a Scotchman on the make, a contest for a soundbite has been inaugurated. If I've got this right, the idea is to find a phrase encapsulating Those Things We Hold in Common. A form of words - I'm not making this up - could then be printed on passports, money, repossession notices and, for all I know, emblazoned on public buildings. BritSpeak, with no hint of a fascist overtone, has become policy.

I'm all for it. Honest. The best jokes are those that leave the victim oblivious. The people who imagine that "Britishness" can be marketed like a pound of mince will never get it. As W C Fields reminded us, never give a sucker an even break. "Britain - Irony-Free Since '83": how's that?

In truth, and at the risk of giving comfort to tabloid halitosis, you couldn't make it up. The era of Gordon Brown is ripe, even replete, with this sort of stuff. He and those around him appear to believe that speech dictates feeling, that if you think British, you become British, and that your inner Scot can be banished like an importuning guiser with a Home Office initiative. The medium is the message.

Possibly so. Earlier in the week, nevertheless, I tried to formulate my patriotic slogan. Then I wondered if little Pablo, my half-Spanish nephew, would approve. I thought about my French nieces, and the hulking trio who expect me to follow the fortunes of Hull FC, and the other three who don't quite know who to support, even in Lanarkshire, and about my genetic stew of a son.

The soul of my wife's Armenian grandmother also had a word or two to say, as usual. My Irish sixteenth muttered about butchers' aprons. All the ancestral voices reminded me that, with the best will in the world, I'm not good at being British. Nothing personal. Grandad's brother was blown to bits in Mesopotamia, once upon a time, in the name of a historical nuance. How's that for king and country?

Here's the slogan, regardless: Bugger Off.

It captures, I think, the essential Britain Mr Brown covets most, in all its frantic paranoia, its fears and its bottomless, complacent self-regard. How could the European Union best be reformed? Bugger off. How might Britain best take its place in the world? Bugger off. How shall we deal decently with the phenomenon of pan-European immigration? They can all just bugger off.

A union of 27 states probably requires a few rules, I think. It would make sense, equally, if a pending imperial power saw fit to acquire a foreign policy infrastructure, protocols on voting procedures and an ethos. It would be eminently sensible, meanwhile, if the corrupt husk of an off-shore nineteenth-century imperium should choose to view these developments in terms of naked self-interest.

Fat chance. Mr Brown's government has lied, consistently, about the latest European treaty. The deal struck before the midnight hour in Lisbon this week has profound constitutional implications for the British state. A referendum ought to be the minimum requirement. Personally, I would vote for this disguised European constitution - and I have actually read the document - but, also personally, I think it is wasted on my friends the British.

They should get out of Europe. They should, on a free vote, just bugger off. They should rebel against Brown and all his predecessors. The treaty, actually a constitution reborn, is too good for them. They do not deserve this Europe and its extraordinary dimensions, its profound implications. Britain, with or without a cheesy slogan, is parochial and dull and intellectually decadent. Some Scots always said so.

A referendum would prove it. Mr Brown's "British" do not much care for the world. That is the sole reason why he will not allow them a vote on a political development - possibly the rebirth of the Holy Roman Empire, with knobs on - that they dislike, and deplore, in their guts. They would, given the chance, say what they mean. The entire history of the United Kingdom's engagement with "Europe" has been a tale of disdain and pitiful ignorance, after all. Personally, I'd rather be in Montpellier or Murcia or Moldova any day of the week.

The domestic political question, since the 1950s, has been as follows. Why will no British government ever allow a British electorate just to tell all the foreigners what the Brits, with the usual conceptual difficulties, truly think? Several reasons. One has to do with the elites who believe, contrary to all the evidence, that they know better. Britain cannot easily avoid the European land mass. Policy, they tell themselves, follows. The underlying reality is a drizzling, dreich and dismal thing. It is not complicated, it is not profound, but it is real and ineluctable: the British don't like foreigners.

They wish the world would go away. They have no interest in bonds, affinities or exotic allegiances. They are constitutionally (when not institutionally) racist. British, and incapable of carrying a Beethoven tune, they have not examined the content of a political idea since the Romans went home. Show them any scheme for greater European harmony you could name and they will refuse.

When I first came up with the formula it was treated as provocative. That was the idea. The formula was this: Scottish by circumstance, European by choice, and British only under protest. So why on earth would that cause Glasgow's Gordon Brown, socialism's last breathing internationalist, a problem?

Only because he knows that a vote on the European treaty would end in "humiliation" for his government. Only because there would follow a Little England clamour for complete, final withdrawal from Europe's union. Only because actual Europeans would give the slogan back to us. Good. Bugger off, they'd say, from the Med to the Latvian fringe, and all across Mittel Europa. Bugger off, please, once and for all.

It would make sense. Finally, the Brits would declare themselves. The truth, for decades unspoken, would be plain. They do not like Europe, they do not wish to be European and they have a democratic right to say so.

I have the consequent right to say that a "European superstate" strikes me as a fine idea. A geo-political counterweight to the American (or Russian or Chinese) entity sounds obvious. But there's more. I want to be one of those Europeans they talk about. Which is to say that "Brit", slogan or not, is the less congenial choice. What's the slogan? Bugger off.

A country, a state, that enjoins a ministry to persuade a citizen to re-invent his patriotism is encountering problems, I suspect. A government that cannot explain why sovereignty is negotiable for the greater good has no worthwhile "values", meanwhile. Patriotic British folk have, or should have, a perfect right to vote down Mr Brown's Lisbon deal. They'll be wrong, I'll be European and the real problem will remain.

A constitution cannot endure without a democratic mandate. I favour a new Europe, most do not. But all, even the dull-witted Brits, are entitled to a say.