Leading Article: A needless and damaging battle

Douglas Hurd had an impossible hand to play in Ioannina, and yesterday he more or less conceded defeat. When the Foreign Secretary says that Britain's worries 'are now more fully understood', and that 'people have moved towards us', it is a clear sign that he has bowed to the inevitable.

The questions now are whether his climbdown over qualified majority voting (QMV) within the European Union will be accepted by the Cabinet on Tuesday; whether he might feel forced to resign if it is not; and whether, if it is, a representative of the Euro-sceptics might see fit to tender his own resignation. The odds are against any such blood-letting. But it promises to be a session of strong words and high emotions.

If John Major had been seeking to devise a sequence of events that would do maximum damage both to the Conservative Party and to Britain's not very good name in Europe, he could scarcely have improved on what has happened. This was an unnecessary and unwinnable battle. It was always assumed that if and when the European Union was further enlarged, the minimum number of votes required to block decisions governed by QMV would be raised from 23.

Given that large countries have 10 votes and smaller ones three or four, the proposed increase to 27 seemed rather modest. The intellectual case for the increase is strong: in a larger community, a larger number of votes should be required to block the will of the majority. Yet that case was not properly made - even though Britain's action threatened to jeopardise the entry of the Scandinavians and Austria that the Government had so zealously backed.

The impression was thus created that this country (with Spain's support) was prepared to delay a historic development paving the way for the entry of Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic - all for an entirely negative objective. The real aim, as everyone understood, was to propitiate the Europhobe right wing of the Conservative Party, and so prevent another damaging split.

Now Mr Hurd slinks back from northern Greece, having had to abandon the magic figure of 23 but still hoping to wrap the dreaded 27 in a diplomatic fig-leaf. The net result has been first to revive and then to deepen the split within the party, with the possibility of a serious crisis. It is not Mr Hurd who should be blamed. He knew he could not hope to win outright and would do well to salvage a face-saving concession or two.

The blame rests squarely with the Prime Minister. He aligned himself with the rejectionists, cheapened himself by mocking Labour's John Smith as Monsieur Oui, the poodle of Brussels, and indicated he was prepared to see the EU's enlargement delayed. If this was a man who still wanted Britain to be at the heart of Europe, it was presumably as a clot. The damage to his party, to this country and to the EU is already serious. If the Cabinet rejects the proposed new formula, it could become yet worse.