Quotes of the Day

Courageous visionary or cornered opportunist? Confident democrat or hypocritical gambler? Tony Blair may qualify for all these titles thanks to his abrupt, massive and raggedly executed U-turn last week. After months of deriding a referendum on the proposed European Union constitution as a "gross and irresponsible betrayal of the true British national interest," he endorsed the idea after all. The normally dour Conservative leader, Michael Howard, was gleeful as he mocked Blair's pirouette during a House of Commons debate. "Six months ago, the Prime Minister stood before his party conference and said, with all the lip-quivering intensity for which he has become famous, 'I can only go one way. I've not got a reverse gear.' Today we could hear the gears grinding," he scoffed, to discomfort from the Labour benches and guffaws from his own.

But for Blair, Britain and the E.U., the referendum is no joke. By championing a cause many in his own party consider unwinnable, Blair is risking his premiership — a humiliating rout could drive him from office. His about-face not only raises the prospect that one of the E.U.'s major countries will veto a treaty that requires approval by all 25 members, but creates awkward problems for the governments that figured they could get by without votes of their own. French President Jacques Chirac in particular is now under pressure to give his stroppy voters their say, and they may well say non. Blair's move is a "big risk," said Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schüssel, "because domestic politics could very easily get mixed up with a fundamental European question, and that is always dangerous."

But Blair hopes it will at least get him through the night. The public's trust in him has taken a beating from the Iraq war and an occupation that is getting more dangerous every day. Howard, backed by several Euro-skeptic newspapers, had been scoring points off Blair for arrogance and untrustworthiness in blocking the referendum, a theme that would have dominated local and European elections in June and provided a big stick for pummeling Labour in the general election expected a year from now. "Blair is bowing to political reality," says one Labour official, and the Prime Minister himself put it in only slightly more elevated terms: "There is no point in continuing to have an argument about ... whether we are arrogant in refusing to listen to people. Let's clear it all out of the way and have a debate on the substance."

Can he win? British bookmaker Ladbrokes gave odds of 8 to 1 against. Dominic Cummings, former director of a successful campaign against the euro, cites polls showing acute skepticism of the E.U. and all its works: 67% of British voters say it's "failing"; only 27% want it to become a political union; tabloids regularly caricature meddling, know-nothing Brussels bureaucrats. An ICM survey taken after Blair's U-turn showed that only 25% of the British public planned to vote in favor of the constitution; according to Eurobarometer, the E.U.'s polling arm, average support for the pact in the rest of Europe is 77%.

Nick Sparrow, managing director of the polling company ICM, urges a little caution, though. Right now, he says, people conflate the E.U., the euro and the constitution (still being negotiated) into "a big blob of Europe," which means it's hard to predict how they'll feel about the constitution after an exhaustive campaign. But still they fear the blob. Cummings, who has been present recently at focus groups testing themes to fight the constitution, says people voice anti-E.U. views spontaneously and with a vehemence that leaves the government little to work with. "The only way Blair wins is if the Tories say, 'This is really all about getting us out of the E.U.,'" Cummings says. "But Howard isn't going to fall for that trap. All spin aside, I just can't see what the hell the government thinks it's doing." An aide to one of Blair's Cabinet Ministers admits that "it will be a temptation for a lot of people to vote no. Britain isn't going to withdraw from the E.U. as a result, so if a British rejection screws up the E.U., so what?"

Blair started trying to convince voters of the contrary last week. He portrayed the constitution as a basically benign tidying-up exercise that would streamline E.U. procedures to avoid gridlock as it expands to 25 members, without sapping core national prerogatives to set tax rates and foreign and defense policy. But he also forecast dire results if Britain balked, leaving it isolated on Europe's margins, even tempting the rest of the E.U. countries to wash their hands of pesky Albion and go off on their own. He claimed this was exactly what the Tories wanted: to use the vote as a way of forcing a constitutional crisis that would allow them to pry the U.K. out of the E.U. and into some kind of associate membership. But Howard resisted Blair's attempt to shove the contest onto such favorable turf. Instead, he painted the constitution as a way station on the slippery slope to a European superstate, and the downside of rejecting it as minor. "If this constitution does not proceed as a consequence of a no vote in this country, Britain would remain a full participating member of the European Union," Howard insisted.

Any referendum is still a long way off — no earlier than fall 2005 — and some Labour M.P.s are hoping Blair will use that time to slip out of the trap. First, E.U. governments must settle the text of a constitution (which appears likely in June, but may founder); then Parliament will debate it, which Labour hopes will reignite Tory tensions over Europe; then a general election is expected, after which, if Blair wins again, Howard could be weakened by a leadership fight; or perhaps France, Denmark or some other country's referendum will guillotine the treaty first, making a British vote academic. But there is part of Blair that may relish this fight. He has long spoken of wanting to lead Britain to the "heart of Europe" — whose 10 new members, generally free-market and pro-American, should give Britain added clout. And a referendum triumph would be a high note on which to end almost a decade in office.

It would stun many British Euro- skeptics to know that on the Continent, opponents of the constitution are likely to complain not that it will enhance the powers of interfering left-wing bureaucrats, but impose brutal market forces imported from the U.S. and Britain. Such differences only underline the way the E.U. remains a menagerie of states, not a single organism. The constitution "was never going to be ratified" unanimously as required, argues one Member of European Parliament who helped draft the document. But this M.E.P. doesn't object: "The core should move ahead in a two-speed Europe." Schüssel has another solution: a Continentwide referendum to encourage a sense of a shared destiny. Whether the constitution ends up getting ratified or rejected, Blair's referendum U-turn — and the Continental jitters it has set off — suggests the people's voice is going to be heard in Europe.

• J.F.O. McALLISTER London
• The PM backs a risky referendum on the E.U. constitution