Steve Richards: Gordon Brown must fight for the European cause against the massed ranks of sceptics

The sleeping issue of Europe is about to awake. Tony Blair spent much of his leadership assuming he would have a titanic battle over Europe, for once taking on Rupert Murdoch and his mighty media empire. The battle never happened. Europe slept fitfully throughout his leadership.

Instead it is Gordon Brown who faces the prospect of a battle with Britain's mighty extreme Eurosceptics unless he decides to give in at the first whiff of gunfire. The so-called EU constitution is making a reappearance of sorts in the form of a new treaty. The proposed changes will be more modest than the original and in their ambitions far less sweeping than the Maastricht Treaty that the Conservative government signed up to.

Yet the new treaty will cause an explosion in Britain. Already the touch paper is lit. David Cameron calls for a referendum. The Sun newspaper clears its pages to condemn the rule changes in advance. The Daily Mail fumes. Both look to "Gord", as The Sun calls him, with a sinister affection to come to their rescue, and of course save their country at the same time.

There are many layers to this story and this is only the opening chapter. Tony Blair is in a peculiarly weird position. He will attend next week's summit with only days to go before he leaves the stage. The fix of power will be over forever, no more decision making that shapes the destiny of a country. Yet for a few hours he will still be in there, negotiating over the future of Europe and Britain's place within it.

One of the understated reasons for Blair's ostentatious closeness to Bush relates to his assumption that at some point he would have to fight the battle of his life over Europe. He was relaxed even when some newspapers portrayed him as Bush's poodle, calculating that he could turn this attack to his advantage in relation to Europe. Blair was known to note in private at the height of the Bush poodle stories that at least no one would accuse him of being anti-American in a referendum campaign on Europe.

He envisaged being the most pro-American prime minister in British history fighting for a "yes" vote in a plebiscite on the euro or the European constitution. That is why in the most deranged period of his leadership he contemplated a referendum on the euro in the period after the Iraq war. Fleetingly he wanted to fight the referendum as the pro-American war leader, neutering some of the vitriol from the anti-European pro-war newspapers.

Brown put a stop to any plans for membership of the euro and has been proven right in his judgements then. But now he faces a much subtler challenge. How ironic that it is Brown, who blocked previous battles over Europe, who now faces one as an incoming Prime Minister.

On one level of course Brown faces no significant challenge. He should accept the revised treaty and reflect on his good fortune in being a leader in Europe at a time when Merkel and Sarkozy are in the ascendancy. As the director of the Centre for European Reform, Charles Grant, points out: "With a new generation of reform-minded leaders in charge of France, Germany and the European Commission, Britain has the chance to help lead the EU towards a more pragmatic, economically liberal future. But if it blocks a new treaty its voice will count for less and others will lead the EU." Put like that the path Brown must choose is obvious.

But of course Brown's calculations are not straightforward, nor based on what is actually in the revised treaty. He fears the onslaught of newspapers that have the power to destroy the opening phase of his period in No 10. As a double whammy the Eurosceptic newspapers would be in alliance with Cameron in their Eurosceptic crusade.

Europe or admiring newspapers? Not surprisingly Brown hopes that the choice will be less stark. He will attempt to establish one of his famous dividing lines: Britain under Labour in Europe acting in the national interest against the Tories losing influence in Europe. Sometimes he dares to dream about a new political consensus on Europe.

But Blair's experience has been that the Eurosceptics are never satisfied and never give up. They choose one issue and then another. They cannot accept that Britain's interests and those of Europe coincide. Instead they prefer to look back to a fantasy world where Margaret Thatcher negotiated imaginary vetoes that are now being threatened by imaginary federalists.

Oddly in this crazy British debate Brown's greatest ally will be the facts. If he clings to them he will pull through this challenge. If he tries to be too clever he will stumble. Over the next few weeks there will be hysterical headlines about a new president of Europe and a mighty foreign minister. "Gord" will be under immense pressure to blow it all away. And yet in his early months as Prime Minister he will have a rare opportunity. Voters will be paying more attention than usual. They will listen more carefully.

Brown must use the space to explain that a president would chair the European Council in place of the rotating presidency, an eccentric arrangement that has never worked effectively. The president would have no additional formal powers. The new post of foreign minister is a merger of two existing posts. The bigger countries will become more influential in terms of the way the voting is organised. The right of one country to veto decisions will be removed in areas where Britain will benefit from closer co-operation, such as in policing and criminal law. Anyway Britain will have an opt out, one that worries the Home Office so much that it is asking how Britain will be able to opt in.

Those Tory Eurosceptics from the early 1990s have won. I recall the endless debates in the House of Commons about the Maastricht Treaty. A succession of Tory MPs rose day after day to declare that they did not want to pull out of the EU, but sought enlargement and an end to the domination of the Franco-German axis. Emphatically they did not want to join the euro.

They have got their way. Britain is not going to join the euro. The current rule changes were brought about to manage enlargement. France and Germany no longer dominate a much bigger EU. For now at least Britain pulls strings too. In spite of the Iraq war Blair has been a big player in the EU, bigger than is realised here.

Brown will call his approach hard- headed pro-Europeanism, an echo of another Brownite contortion "pro-euro caution". Such phrases will not get him very far. He must decide to engage, put the case and hope that the facts get through. It will be tough, but the alternative of weakly turning his back on a pragmatic treaty would be much worse.

s.richards@independent.co.uk

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