Europe takes centre stage

The Tory campaign is focussing on the currency issue

It's almost as if there are two different elections going on.

The Conservatives seem to want to talk only about Europe and the pound - the other main parties aren't focussing on Europe and accuse the Tories of becoming a one-issue party.

The Tories sought to focus on the question that Labour would pose in a Euro-referendum.

The Conservative foreign affairs spokesman Francis Maude challenged Tony Blair to agree to six conditions to ensure a fair referendum.

The entry date would have to be specifically set down, there would have to be an overhaul of the "rigged campaign spending limits" and an absolute ban on any pro-Euro propaganda from Brussels had to be imposed.

The conservative attack was buoyed by Robin Cook's intervention over the weekend.

It worries a lot of people because it's not been fully explained to them

Sir Roy Denman

He went further than many of his Labour colleagues when he said of the question: "Should Britain be in the single currency - yes or no? I personally would support that question."

The Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy refused to share the Conservatives' fears that the referendum might be rigged.

He remained confident both that Labour would devise a fair question and that the public would make - what was in his eyes - the right choice: to join the European Single Currency.

For one of the civil servants who negotiated British entry into the EEC in the 1970s, the Euro debate has been depressing.

Wilson: no need to discuss question

Sir Roy Denman was the EC's ambassador to Washington for most of the 1980s.

He's a Liberal Democrat and told PM that that without a proper debate there will never be a referendum on joining the Euro.

He said that Labour's silence on the Euro early in this Parliament had allowed Euro-sceptics to put their views unopposed - and this meant many people had been persuaded that joining the Euro was a bad idea when they were not in full possession of the facts.

Brian Wilson, Labour's Foreign Affairs spokesman, told PM it was "asinine" to think it was possible to write a question for a potential Euro referendum now when the context was unknown.