Tony's Big Adventure

Nick Sparrow, managing director of the polling company ICM, urges a little caution, though. Right now, he says, people conflate the E.U., the euro and the constitution (still being negotiated) into "a big blob of Europe," which means it's hard to predict how they'll feel about the constitution after an exhaustive campaign. But still they fear the blob. Cummings, who has been present recently at focus groups testing themes to fight the constitution, says people voice anti-E.U. views spontaneously and with a vehemence that leaves the government little to work with. "The only way Blair wins is if the Tories say, 'This is really all about getting us out of the E.U.,'" Cummings says. "But Howard isn't going to fall for that trap. All spin aside, I just can't see what the hell the government thinks it's doing." An aide to one of Blair's Cabinet Ministers admits that "it will be a temptation for a lot of people to vote no. Britain isn't going to withdraw from the E.U. as a result, so if a British rejection screws up the E.U., so what?"

Blair started trying to convince voters of the contrary last week. He portrayed the constitution as a basically benign tidying-up exercise that would streamline E.U. procedures to avoid gridlock as it expands to 25 members, without sapping core national prerogatives to set tax rates and foreign and defense policy. But he also forecast dire results if Britain balked, leaving it isolated on Europe's margins, even tempting the rest of the E.U. countries to wash their hands of pesky Albion and go off on their own. He claimed this was exactly what the Tories wanted: to use the vote as a way of forcing a constitutional crisis that would allow them to pry the U.K. out of the E.U. and into some kind of associate membership. But Howard resisted Blair's attempt to shove the contest onto such favorable turf. Instead, he painted the constitution as a way station on the slippery slope to a European superstate, and the downside of rejecting it as minor. "If this constitution does not proceed as a consequence of a no vote in this country, Britain would remain a full participating member of the European Union," Howard insisted.

Any referendum is still a long way off — no earlier than fall 2005 — and some Labour M.P.s are hoping Blair will use that time to slip out of the trap. First, E.U. governments must settle the text of a constitution (which appears likely in June, but may founder); then Parliament will debate it, which Labour hopes will reignite Tory tensions over Europe; then a general election is expected, after which, if Blair wins again, Howard could be weakened by a leadership fight; or perhaps France, Denmark or some other country's referendum will guillotine the treaty first, making a British vote academic. But there is part of Blair that may relish this fight. He has long spoken of wanting to lead Britain to the "heart of Europe" — whose 10 new members, generally free-market and pro-American, should give Britain added clout. And a referendum triumph would be a high note on which to end almost a decade in office.

It would stun many British Euro- skeptics to know that on the Continent, opponents of the constitution are likely to complain not that it will enhance the powers of interfering left-wing bureaucrats, but impose brutal market forces imported from the U.S. and Britain. Such differences only underline the way the E.U. remains a menagerie of states, not a single organism. The constitution "was never going to be ratified" unanimously as required, argues one Member of European Parliament who helped draft the document. But this M.E.P. doesn't object: "The core should move ahead in a two-speed Europe." Schüssel has another solution: a Continentwide referendum to encourage a sense of a shared destiny. Whether the constitution ends up getting ratified or rejected, Blair's referendum U-turn — and the Continental jitters it has set off — suggests the people's voice is going to be heard in Europe.