One week to go and it looks like the unthinkable may well happen. The "no" vote for the May 29 referendum on the EU constitution now stands at 52 percent in the opinion polls. Six surveys over the last week have produced more or less the same result. If I were a government "yes" man, I would be very worried indeed. How on earth has it comes to this? Seen from any other perspective, France has wangled for itself an extremely favourable document. The EU constitution was drawn up by a former French president and is thoroughly Gallic in its conception and language. By diplomatic dexterity, the French government got the text past all the 24 others -- only to discover that the one thing it hadn't taken account of was its own fickle public. Two months ago the polls were overwhelmingly for the "yes," but in the space of a short campaign a majority seems to have been convinced that the constitution is a sell-out to that bogey of the national imagination, "neo-liberalism." I think the answer is in essence quite simple. The French are anxious and afraid. The good years ended in the 70s and since then (they think) it has been all downhill: economic uncertainty, unemployment and mass immigration from north Africa. The same period has seen the growth in power of the Brussels technocracy as European intergation forged ahead. The public thinks the two processes are related: and if they can only shift Europe off its current trajectory, then the good old days of ease and security will return. They are undoubtedly wrong. But the French have a weird knack of thinking the world should follow France and not the other way around. One woman told me the peoples of Europe would be grateful for a French No vote, because it would be a positive pro-European No, not a nasty British Eurosceptic one. Really? I think the reaction of the rest of Europe will be to say what a load of arrogant ingrates.