There will never be a better time to go for the euro

Suddenly, bad polling data looks more volatile - and easier to turn - than ever before

Depending on which paper you picked up at the beginning of this week, Tony Blair has either decided to "go for it" – in the words he used in his last Labour conference speech – on the euro, or Gordon Brown has decided to rule it out until after the next election. This isn't bad reporting. Different, usually reliable sources are saying different things, which makes me suspect that everything is still up for grabs in this debate.

Mr Blair, it seems, has yet to steady his nerve ahead of the announcement – due by the first week of June – about whether the five economic tests for joining the euro have been met. His aides are cautious, as though they don't really know their boss's thinking on this issue either. This means that he could still make the bold, history-making choice and call a campaign.

The confusion we are seeing now is nothing new: one of the Government's first crises, in autumn 1997, was over mixed messages on a euro referendum. We have seen a six-year euro dither because the stakes are fantastically high. It's no wonder Mr Blair is nervous. If he called a referendum and lost, he would go from being the most electorally successful Prime Minister in Labour's history to being recorded by the history books as the PM who shot himself in the stomach – from hero to zero in just six weeks. The Tory party, currently trundling slowly towards the crematorium furnace, would leap from the coffin like a villain at the end of a bad horror movie, bleeding but with a chance of throttling our hero after all.

And yet, and yet... The people around Tony Blair say that he is learning from his new, risk-taking style. He always said that one of his key aims in government was to secure Britain's destiny within the EU. He knows only too well that, without the euro referendum, he will be remembered in Europe as the man who pushed Britain even further away from the continent by publicly scrapping – to the glee of the Murdoch press – with Chirac and Schröder.

The Iraq war showed how a determined Tony Blair could reverse a 70-30 majority against a policy in just a few months. On a smaller scale, Ken Livingstone's brave decision to introduce a congestion charge has impressed Mr Blair by showing how another substantial chunk of the electorate gloomily predicting disaster could be turned into a whopping, irreversible majority in favour.

Suddenly, bad polling data looks more volatile – and easier to turn – than ever before. Polls now provide Mr Blair with an indication of how hard he will have to fight, rather than – as in the recent past – psychologically sealing off with iron bars any policy that does not already flow in the direction of majority opinion.

And if Blair is serious about ever going for the euro – as I believe he is – there will never be a better moment than now. After the next election, the few remaining pro-Europeans in the Tory party will be ageing and further from the public's memory than ever. Edward Heath, Michael Heseltine and Ken Clarke already have one foot in the grave; they will look more grey and less plausible as each year passes. The Tory Europhiles will disappear just as surely as Labour Eurosceptics like Peter Shore, Barbara Castle and Tony Benn have disappeared.

We don't like to admit it in Labour circles, but the old tag that the Tories are divided over Europe is now largely untrue. The older Tories are split – Maggie can still take a swing at Ken and party like it's 1989 – but they are now in the Lords or retirement. They seem to most voters now like the ghosts of Recession Past. Tories in their fifties and younger – the generation who now run the party – are only divided between those who want to resist the euro and those like Bill Cash who privately want to go for the crazy nuclear option of withdrawing from the EU altogether.

A euro campaign will be far easier to win with the sane-sounding wet Tories vigorously campaigning on the same side. Each year of waiting sees that prospect receding a notch further into fantasy. And will there ever be a Tory leader who is more of a liability to the anti-euro cause than IDS?

The talk of Tony Blair sacking Gordon Brown if he tries to veto a referendum seems overblown. For all the journalistic hype and the whispers of over-enthusiastic aides, the pair have stayed incredibly politically united for more than a decade. The Chancellor did seem to pour cold water on hopes for a referendum by repeatedly dissing the eurozone economies in the Budget last week, and there are reports that his assessment of the euro tests will be negative. But Gordon Brown is sensible enough to know that he and Tony Blair sink or swim together – and it is time he admitted to himself that he did not win the leadership in 1994. Either way, the longer Mr Blair waits, the deeper these divisions will cut.

It would be a huge leap into the void to call a referendum – but today, with Tony Blair still buzzing from vindication in Iraq, anything is possible. There is a limit to how long he can keep the pro-euro camp waiting at the altar before they become so disheartened that they won't perform on their wedding night. Mr Blair should remember what he said last year – "New Labour is at its best when we are at our boldest" – and lift the euro-veil before it is too late.

j.hari@independent.co.uk