Let’s get a couple of things straight. Even after the rebate, the United Kingdom remains the second-highest contributor to the EU budget. Indeed, for most of the 34 years since we joined, we and the Germans have been the only two nations to make any net contribution at all.

In the 21 years since Margaret Thatcher secured the abatement, Britain has handed over £120 billion gross (£50 billion net) to Brussels . A billion here, a billion there — after a while it starts to add up to real money. If we were to withhold this tribute, we could give the entire country a two thirds reduction in council tax. Or, if we preferred, we could abolish inheritance tax and capital gains tax, and still have enough left over to scrap stamp duty.

Where exactly is our money going? Well, quite a lot is being lost or stolen. Last month, for the eleventh consecutive year, the European Court of Auditors refused to endorse the EU budget on grounds that it could account definitively for only 11 per cent of the total spending.

Even if, by some miracle, we were able to eliminate the fraud, it would still be an odd way to spend money. Fully 42 per cent of the EU budget goes on the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), surely the most expensive, wasteful, bureaucratic and immoral system of farm support ever devised. It’s not even as though our own farmers benefit: as a food importing nation with relatively efficient farms, we get remarkably little out of the CAP.

The second biggest component of the budget, accounting for a further 37 per cent, is made up of the structural funds that go to Eastern and Southern Europe . Many British people seem to be happier to pay for these than to subsidise French farmers. But it is worth standing back for a moment and asking what moral claim the poorer regions of the EU have to our taxes. States recognise a special responsibility to their own citizens: that is why we have social welfare. Equally, common humanity bids us acknowledge a duty to the poorest on the planet: the hungry peoples of Africa , for example. But the ex-Communist countries are in neither category.

More to the point, there is no evidence that these so-called “Cohesion Funds” do their recipients any good. The EU’s new members grew far faster during the 1990s than they have done since joining. Interestingly, they also grew faster than existing EU pensioners, such as Portugal and Greece . Why? Because permanent subsidies are debilitating to states, just as they are to individuals. They encourage people to arrange their affairs around the hand-outs, and so disincentivise enterprise.

I am not saying that every euro spent by the EU is misdirected. EU funds can go to worthy causes: indeed, I have sometimes helped constituents to open the Euro-spigots. But I never do so without wondering why we can’t simply allocate the money ourselves, instead of sloshing it through the various tubes and chambers of the Brussels machine, leaking all the way, before a little bit dribbles back to these shores.

So, here’s a suggestion for Tony Blair. Why not appeal directly over the heads of his fellow leaders to their peoples. “The electorates of Europe have just voted ‘no’,” he could say. “They want us to be doing less, not more. So let’s cut our programmes and, in so doing, cut the budget. Let’s scrap all these expensive boondoggles. If we can’t make the EU budget cleaner, let us at least make it smaller. That way all of you, not just the Brits, can get your money back”.