Who are you calling a xenophobe, Mr MacShane?

Anthony Browne says that Eurosceptics are not frightened of foreigners. But they are frightened by the threat Brussels poses to democracy throughout the EU phew. At last our Gennan-poetiytranslating, El Pais-reading, Francophonic, half-Polish Europe minister has explained who Eurosceptics are. They are, Mr Denis MacShane says, latent xenophobes and racists driven by a hatred of Germany and France that dates back to the second world war.

As an immigrant living in Belgium, who is half Norwegian, a quarter Irish, an eighth French and an eighth English, with added cousins in Denmark and Italy, I now know I can't be Eurosceptic. I can't hate Europeans; I'm related to half of them. Mind you, an Italian plane did kill my grandfather on HMS Liverpool in 1940 as it sailed in the Mediterranean, and I still haven't got a proper answer about that from my Italian relatives.

The MacShane description doesn't quite fit Nigel Farage, the leader in the European Parliament of the United Kingdom Independence party, who may be hung up on gory military history but is unlikely to be a Hun-hater. His wife, whom I presume he loves, is German. In fact, the MacShane formula probably doesn't fit Ukip's controversialist-in-chief, Godfrey Bloom MEP, whose wife, like Mr MacShane, is of Polish extraction.

Euroscepticism being driven by anti-French feeling is a theory that will probably come as a surprise to Ukip's ally in the European Parliament, the Mouvement pour la France, which seems to believe that France is as much a religion as a country.

Eurosceptics come in all nationalities, but it is true they often come in unorthodox shapes and colours. The second largest Eurosceptic party in the European Parliament after Ukip is the Roman Catholic Polish League of Families, which is as opposed to the EU as it is to people enjoying an uninhibited sex life. Ukip's Dutch allies in the European parliament are the MEPs of the religious party ChristenUnie, who believe women shouldn't have a role in public life. They make Mr Bloom, who complained that women don't clean enough behind the fridge, seem like a hairy-legged feminist.

We have to look north to find gay-friendly, anti-racist, anti-sexist, wind-power-supporting, feel-good Euroscepticism. There, between the pine trees, it certainly exists. Mr Farage's copresident of the Eurosceptic group in Parliament is the ex-communist and still leftwing veteran Danish MEP Jens-Peter Sonde, who is as eminently lovable as he is quotable.

In Sweden you'll find a buoyant, right-on, intellectually supercharged Euroscepticism untainted by any resentment of Germans, which caused an earthquake in the European elections. Sweden's main TV political commentator, K.G. Bergstrom, declared breathlessly that the success of the Eurosceptics was the 'biggest single upset in modern Swedish political history'.

The June List, a party founded in February for June's elections, which was routinely pilloried by all right-thinking pundits, and which under Sweden's electoral rules even had to distribute its own ballot papers to 5,000 polling booths, was not expected to win a seat. In fact, just four months after it was founded, it gained 14.4 per cent of the vote, putting it in third place, and won three of the country's 19 seats in the European Parliament.

It is difficult to dismiss the June Listers as gadflies, the way Michael Howard did Ukip. Their star MEP is Lars Wohlin, the Swedish answer to Sir Eddie George. He is a former governor of the Central Bank of Sweden and was for 13 years head of the country's largest mortgage company. As a senior adviser to Dresdner Bank he is unlikely to be fuelled by hatred of Germans. The leader of the June List is Nils Lundgren, the former chief economist of Sweden's central bank.

Nor are they a bunch of closet right-wingers. While Ukip gets 80 per cent of its vote from the Right, the June List attracts equal support from Left and Right. Rather than being nationalistic champions of Sweden against the Hun, they won support by positioning themselves as champions of democracy.

Unlike Ukip, they don't want to leave the EU, but they are bitterly opposed to the European constitution, and want a huge return of powers to national governments. Regulations on air and water quality, agriculture, working hours, health and safety at work, social protection, sport and culture should, they insist, all be handed back by Brussels. They believe that the EU should not make laws unless there is a clear cross-border issue — like trade — where international cooperation makes sense. They argue that this not just more democratic, but more economically efficient.

Take drinking water quality, the standards for which are set by the EU for 25 countries, using the excuse that water must be safe everywhere. The June List insists that water quality must primarily be a local issue, and that deciding in Brussels the level of nitrates undermines a vital democratic decision-making process.

There is a trade-off between the water quality and how much is invested in watercleaning technology. Where to make that trade-off can best be decided by those affected by it. The Greeks, being poorer than Germans, may not feel it is worthwhile spending that extra hundred million euros to reduce nitrates by a few parts per million. They may decide the money is better spent on something else, like ouzo. 'I don't think the Greeks want dirty water, but if they do that is their choice,' said Jesper Katz, June List's chief strategist.

In the EU now, between 60 and 70 per cent of laws are made in Brussels, thus bypassing parliaments. 'There are 5,000 pages of regulations a year, and we don't accept that. You are undermining the position of the Swedish Parliament by moving more and more legislation to Brussels,' said Lars Wohlin.

EU supporters claim that one of its benefits is that it spreads best practice — one country finds out what is best, and then Brussels stops other countries wasting their time making their own mistakes. But to the June List the rush to harmonise legislation stops nations experimenting with different policies, and often it ends up spreading worst practice, such as the Common Agricultural Policy. And because the worst practice is imposed at a continental level it can be extraordinarily difficult to unravel, even after it has been discredited. 'This way of working threatens to put Europe into stalemate,' said Mr Wohlin, who insists that deciding policies at national level gives far more flexibility in a rapidly changing world.

For the June List, the issue is not that the EU is making silly bendy banana laws, but that it should stop meddling in national affairs. That doesn't mean there aren't silly laws. Sweden imposed a ban on jet skis on lakes to protect their wildlife, but Brussels decided that it amounted to a barrier to trade, and forced them to lift the ban. June List insists that the Swedish Parliament should have the right to ban jet skis in Sweden. Is that a sign of latent racism, xenophobia and an unhealthy preoccupation with the second world war?

Anthony Browne is Europe correspondent for the Times.