Addressing the European Parliament on Wednesday, President of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker again proved beyond all reasonable doubt why Britons were right to vote to leave the European Union. Because in his State of the Union address, Juncker called for a further weakening of national sovereignty among EU member states.

Juncker was explicit:

"We must improve our ability to speak with one voice when it comes to our foreign policy. It is not right that our Union silenced itself at the [U.N.] when it came to condemning human rights abuses by China. And this because not all Member States could agree. ... This is why today the Commission is proposing to move to qualified majority voting in specific areas of our external relations. I repeat what I said last year on this matter. We should move to qualified majority voting not in all but in specific areas: human rights issues and civilian missions included. This is possible on the basis of the current Treaties and I believe the time has come to make use of this 'lost treasure' of the Lisbon Treaty. I also think we should be able to decide on certain tax matters by qualified majority."

Those words carry great consequence for the notion of sovereignty in Europe. Because while Juncker frames his call for collaboration in areas of common moral alignment, what he actually seeks is an end to the fundamental basis of nationhood — the ability of a each state to set its own policies on matters of national import.

In practical terms, were EU member states to move to qualified majority voting on the matters Juncker identified, it would mean only 55 percent of voting members would need to agree on a policy for it to be introduced as EU policy at large. Note here that Juncker does not define what a "human rights" or "civilian mission" concern might entail. Nor does he speak to what "certain tax matters" he is interested in. These are deliberate omissions designed to avoid a firestorm of public anger across member states at their prospective loss of sovereignty.

Dig a little deeper here and consider a couple of examples that Juncker is almost certainly referring to. For one, his approach would likely mean granting sanctions amnesty to the Iranian theocrats under the excuse of protecting Iranian economic interests. Note that Juncker strongly opposes the Trump administration's newly imposed sanctions on Iran. But what would this mean for states like France and Poland, that are more closely aligned with U.S. views on Iran? They would lose the ability to drive their own policy.

And Britain would ironically have had the most to lose by Juncker's changes. It's not at all unlikely, for example, that the EU might introduce arms export restrictions on Saudi Arabia for its conduct in the war in Yemen. And while Saudi conduct is deeply troubling, the U.K. retains major economic and security ties with Riyadh that could be severed by a EU-qualified majority vote.

And it's not just foreign policy that's relevant here. On taxes, a longtime European Commission focus has been the introduction of a financial tax on individual stock market trades. This would be a direct attack on the British financial center in the City of London, for the benefit of redistributive priorities in Brussels and Strasbourg.

I respect the many Europeans who believe that forging a United States of Europe is in their interest. But Juncker has no intention of asking European voters for their assent in this project. He said as much in his speech when he declared that no new treaty or democratic assent is needed from European populations.

Instead, his sovereignty-reduction reforms are possible, he says, "on the basis of the current Treaties and I believe the time has come to make use of this 'lost treasure' of the Lisbon Treaty." That arrogance speaks to something: the silent authoritarianism that defines the European Union political establishment. Its leaders and adherents (and many in the media) believe they know better than those they are supposed to serve. But they also recognize that many European member state populations would disagree with the grand ambition of the new Europe they seek. So, rather than ask permission to short circuit sovereignty, they do so by executive diktat and judicial activism.

This strategy isn't just undemocratic and immoral; it's also self-defeating. After all, Europeans are cleverer than Juncker gives them credit for. He might think his authoritarianism will enforce a new European order, but in reality it only fuels the hard-line anti-EU movements that have been sweeping across Europe. Were Juncker and his contemporaries to take a more nuanced, democratic approach to governance, Brexit and other looming exits likely never would occur.

But Juncker isn't about compromise. By forcing Britons to choose between interwoven economic cooperation and national sovereignty, he forced Brexit. In that sense, Juncker and his allies remain their own worst enemies. For it is they, not Nigel Farage, who make the EU's eventual implosion most likely.