Tony Blair will have to pay a high price if he wants to take Britain into the euro
PETER °BORNE
Back in the late 1990s. when I still worked for the Daily Express, Tony Blair would occasionally stroll into the newspaper's offices for lunch. Three things stick in my mind about those occasions. The first was the Prime Minister's table manners. Though always a courteous and easy guest, he was prone to wave his cutlery high in the air while making a point. At other moments he would suddenly stretch his arm across the table to prong some distant piece of cheese or fruit with his knife, before putting the item directly into his mouth.
These habits, while harmless enough and even endearing, were disconcerting. So was the Prime Minister's ability to engage in animated conversation for a relatively long stretch of time he tended to arrive at about 1 p.m. then leave at 2.30 sharp — while saying nothing of substance. After these lunches I would return to my desk and try to work out what insights we had gained into matters of state. But it was as if someone had applied a drug that obliterated all memory of proceedings from the mind. The whole event had become a blur. Others report the same sort of experience.
But there was one conversation that still sticks in the mind, mainly because it was repeated each time that Tony Blair came into the Express. At some stage in the meal, usually while the main course was being served, Clive Hollick, the newspaper's proprietor and a powerful figure in the proEuropean movement, would ask in a friendly sort of way when Tony Blair was going to show some leadership on the euro.
The Prime Minister would utter something to the effect that it was for us, and not for him, to lead the way. Lord Hollick would then reply, not without considerable justification, that that was precisely what he was doing, but that Express newspapers could only go so far on its own and that leadership was the job of Downing Street. At this point Alastair Campbell, the No. 10 press secretary, would step in with a rant against the Eurosceptic Tory press, then as now one of his favourite subjects of abuse. Journalists on newspapers of a pro-euro disposition, such as the Guardian or the Independent, reported back exactly the same kind of conversation.
And there the matter remains. Tony Blair has still to take a decisive step. It is admittedly clearer where his sympathies lie. There are even intriguing reports that he
has made private undertakings to fellow European leaders. But the truth is that British policy remains in the same state of paralysis as it did when Tony Blair used to take lunch with the Express three or four years ago.
It is quite possible that the Prime Minister will sustain this by no means completely dignified posture of meaningful indecision all through his premiership. It can be said with assurance, however, that if he is to make up his mind in the course of this Parliament, he must do so in the next 12 months. To leave matters any later — till June 2003, for instance, the date before which Chancellor Gordon Brown has promised to make his declaration about his five so-called 'economic tests' — is too difficult. A further six months at least would be required to push enabling legislation through Parliament — meaning that the referendum would be held in 2004, rather too close to the general election for comfort.
Most of those around the Prime Minister appear to think that he will make his move in the second half of 2002. They are confident that arrival of the euro in palpable form — all 15 billion banknotes and 52 billion coins — will soften public opinion and that Tony Blair, his reputation higher than ever after the war against terrorism, will finally get off the fence, show the leadership his supporters crave and resolve Britain's perplexed relations with Europe once and for all.
I still think that is the least likely outcome. The Prime Minister has never taken unnecessary risks. At the election he made reform of public services his great priority. Since then his attention has been engaged by the campaign against terrorism. He would face charges of neglecting the key issues that affect ordinary people if he allowed himself to be distracted again by the campaign for the euro.
A still greater obstacle is the Chancellor of the Exchequer. I do not think, as a number of observers claim, that Gordon Brown is any more Eurosceptic, or any less of a fan of the euro, than he was five years ago. But the Chancellor's ambition is as ferocious as ever. He has put an inordinate amount of time and effort into forming alliances with the Eurosceptic press. He regards the support of newspapers like the Sun as too valuable to be lightly discarded before he makes his own move for the premiership.
Furthermore, the Chancellor is the guardian of the 'five tests'. These cloudy and mainly subjective qualifications are — as one Treasury official confided shortly before Christmas — 'compatible with any interpretation the government wishes to put on them'. The important thing is that, thanks to a devastating piece of opportunism in autumn 1997, Gordon Brown and no one else will make that interpretation. This puts the Chancellor in the dominant position in any move on the euro. The Prime Minister's support for the single currency is necessary but not sufficient if progress is to be made, while the Chancellor's support is both necessary and sufficient.
In short, Gordon Brown possesses a bargaining chip of overwhelming value. Anyone who knows anything about his granite character, his obsessive ambition, or about the tormented history of his relations with Tony Blair, must sense that he will demand the highest price in return. He will seek one cast-iron assurance: that Tony Blair will make good the halfpromise he gave over dinner at the Granita restaurant in 1994 to step down in favour of his old friend.
That is why those close to both men speculate that 'a second Granita dinner' may become necessary if real progress is to be made towards calling a referendum. Matters of national interest would be on the menu; so would matters personal to both men. Some allies of the Chancellor say that their man believes he has been betrayed twice by Tony Blair. Which is why they say this time any promises about the leadership should not merely be made orally, and that Gordon Brown would insist on having them in writing.
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