Staying in, or dropping out? Major sows confusion over Europe

John Major faced in two directions at once yesterday; offering the warring factions of his own party flatly contradictory signals on Britain's future in the European Union.

In the course of one Commons statement on the Dublin summit at the weekend, the Prime Minister said withdrawal was a delusion, but that continued membership might well be fatally damaged by a wrong decision on the single currency.

He also said that decisions on the European beef ban would be taken "on the basis of science" - only to be contradicted minutes later by the Minister of Agriculture, Douglas Hogg, who told the Commons that a go-ahead for a further cattle cull was purely political.

Mr Major's conflicting signals were issued in advance of a fraught Commons debate on the controversial European fisheries policy, which was later approved by a 12-vote Government majority.

At the very end of his prepared statement on the Dublin summit, Mr Major delivered an ambiguous message, saying that if the EU took the wrong decisions on further integration "the choices made will determine not only the success and stability of Europe as a whole, but Britain's relationship with it".

That apparent doubt cast on the British "relationship" with the EU followed Friday's doom-laden warning, at the summit, that the wrong choices "would blow the European Union wide apart", and last week's inspired report in the Daily Telegraph, that Mr Major was about to jettison the Cabinet's "wait-and-see" policy on the single currency.

As soon as the Prime Minister had questioned the future of the British "relationship" yesterday, some Euro-sceptic newspapers seized on that as a hard threat of unilateral withdrawal.

Today's Sun carries the inside headlines: "Major: We don't need EU lot!" and "Britain can go it alone." But that was not how Mr Major's statement was viewed by some of his own Euro-sceptic colleagues, and Downing Street sources did their best to deny any such reading of the Prime Minister's words.

More importantly, however, Mr Major issued his own direct repudiation in the House, telling the backbench Tory MP Robert Key that the idea of British withdrawal from the EU was a delusion. "Those people who peddle that delusion," he said, "are ... not considering what the British national interest would be, or what the implications of leaving the European Union would be."

However, in answer to aquestion from the Tory Euro-sceptic David Wilshire, the Prime Minister threw in yet another hint of British withdrawal. Mr Major said that there was no question of disengagement from negotiations at a time when Europe faced the most vital question on the single currency.

"Our input into that decision," he said, "may have a material impact upon whether the whole prospect goes ahead, or not if the criteria are wrong."

He added: "And if it goes ahead in the wrong circumstances, I think the damage to our membership of the European Union and the European Union itself might well be fatal."

Picking up the conflicting signals the shadow Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, last night issued Mr Major with a direct challenge, saying he had been told that some newspapers were being urged to interpret the Prime Minister's remarks as a signal "that you may wish to put Britain's withdrawal from the European Union on to the agenda". Mr Cook said: "In the interests of clarity, can you confirm that this is not how you would like these remarks to be interpreted and that nobody with authority to speak on your behalf has suggested otherwise?"

In the fisheries debate, the Government promised a tough stance at a meeting of European ministers this week.

Tony Baldry, the fisheries minister, said he would press for changes to curb quota- hopping, in which foreign firms buy up British fishing quotas. He also promised to tackle the issue of the European rules which have angered both Northern Irish and Unionist MPs, upon whom the Government now depends for a majority. The Government won the vote comfortably after the Ulster Unionists abstained along with the Conservative MPs Sir John Gorst and Terry Dicks.

A Labour spokesman hinted that the victory had been pulled off through secret negotiations, and accused the Government of "living from deal to deal".

Earlier, the Labour leader Tony Blair baited Mr Major as a Prime Minister who was afraid of staging a Commons vote on the single currency, and as the leader of a Government that had incompetently handled the BSE crisis.

But the Prime Minister said of Mr Blair: "If he follows the policies he has advocated so far, the Amsterdam summit [in June] would be a Dutch auction of British sovereignty."

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