Posted Sunday, June 1, 2003; 14.38BST
Robert Worcester, chairman of the polling firm MORI, says "They fear the government is going to sell them out on Europe and thus will try to do it stealthily." Blair is playing right into that sentiment by rejecting a referendum on the constitution, especially when nine other countries so far say they definitely will hold one. Statements from government ministers that the constitution is merely a "tidying-up exercise" haven't helped. Dominic Cummings, the former director of strategy for the Tories, suggests the party has a big opportunity to build on voters' skepticism about the E.U. by arguing it is Blair, not the Tories, who is out of touch and antidemocratic because he is sticking up for an old-fashioned, ossified bureaucracy in Brussels against the popular will. "If the Conservatives took the position that they were the modern party engaged with Europe to solve its real problems, they could make real progress with voters and the business community, which is not pleased with the way Europe is developing," he says.

For many on the Continent, the perpetual furor in Britain over Europe is baffling. Brussels does not seem a threat. They see the constitution as a useful but small development that already reflects too many concessions to mollify Blair. "Every time Europe makes an effort to go further, the British block or destroy it — that's a fact," says a Commission official. "They basically want a free trade alliance and nothing more."

In Warsaw last week, Blair certainly sounded like he wanted a vigorous Britain to play a full role in a thriving Europe. "Anti-Europeanism is not British patriotism," he said. "It is an out-of-date delusion ... and a symptom not of national pride but a lack of confidence about just how strong Britain can and should be." But that's an old line, and bracing language cannot mask a fundamental weakness: that he comes to Europe unable to persuade his people to enter the euro, or to trust their vote on the constitution. Grant goes so far as to say that Blair's European strategy "risks falling apart." Relations with Paris "are frightful" and entrenched. According to a new TIME/CNN poll, voters in France, Germany and the U.K. think Chirac better represents European views on relations with the U.S., 37% to 18%. Even German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder fared better than Blair, with 19%. Blair's closeness to Bush has meant that Britain's influence in many European countries has shrunk in the last nine months, because he's not seen as a trustworthy European — jeopardizing his strategy of trying to bridge the Atlantic. Today he is stranded on the bridge, stymied by a europhobia he does not know how to cure.

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