Waiting for the guillotine to fall

With three days to go before France's referendum on the European constitution, you can tell that the Yes camp has seen the writing on the wall - everyone has started manoeuvring like mad for the moment, on Sunday night, when the guillotine finally falls and the nation is declared to have voted Non.

So what will happen? We can already make some educated guesses about the immediate aftermath of the coming debacle in France. In Brussels, on the other hand, things are rather less sure - in other words, nobody seems to have a clue. I'll leave it to better-informed colleagues to gaze into that particlar crystal ball.

In Paris, the two things of which everyone is sure are that the president, Jacques Chirac, will stay, and that poor old Jean-Pierre Raffarin will go.