Blair takes euro fight to Tories

Hague thinks he is on to a winner over euro

		By Nick Assinder BBC News Online political correspondent

Tony Blair has come out fighting on Europe amid claims he is already preparing the ground for taking Britain into the single currency.

By making some of his most enthusiastic pro-EU and single currency comments yet, he has ensured the issue has risen to the top of the campaign agenda.

Despite his recent insistence that he would concentrate on the core issues of health and education for the rest of the campaign, he has clearly made a deliberate decision to go on the offensive over the issue.

As a result, a Labour press conference on education was overshadowed by questions about the government's new, apparently warmer, tone towards Europe.

Blair has taken fight on to campaign trail

Many believe the prime minister has been rattled by Tory claims that he wanted to avoid the whole area during the election campaign for fear of turning off sceptical voters.

It is thought he has now decided to take an aggressive new line in an attempt to avert that criticism and also to start preparing the ground for a positive campaign on the single currency immediately after the election, if he wins.

Dangers for Blair

William Hague's "Keep the Pound" rallies have been a cornerstone of his election campaign and the opinion polls consistently show the overwhelming majority of voters agree with him.

And, until now, Labour has done all in its power to keep the issue way down the political agenda while Mr Hague has been determined to concentrate on it during the last days of the election campaign.

That has now changed and Europe is bound to become a key part of the remaining days of the campaign. But there are dangers for Mr Blair.

Brown and Blair have done deal

One of the problems is that he and Chancellor Gordon Brown, who is markedly less enthusiastic about the single currency, agreed to play down the issue during the campaign.

They have now plainly agreed they can no longer let the Tories make all the running on this crucial area and that the best means of defence is attack.

Going to win

The other danger is that William Hague has seized on the new tone to repeat his claim that the election is, in effect, a referendum on the single currency.

Labour's counter offensive was always going to be based on the claim that what many Tories really want is withdrawal from the EU and Mr Blair will make much of that between now and polling day.

He would dearly love to concentrate on that alone, rather than the single currency, and he spent the largest part of his speech insisting the choice facing Britain was between Tory isolation and Labour engagement - not just with Europe but with all its traditional allies.

And he attempted to widen the Europe debate beyond the narrow issue of the euro, suggesting it was symbolic of Britain's position in the modern world.

But he has clearly accepted the fact he cannot raise the wider issue without also sparking debate over the single currency.

It is also likely that the prime minister is pretty confident, despite his public comments, that he is going to win the election and he wants to go into the next parliament able to claim voters knew what they were getting on Europe when they backed him.

But, with polls showing somewhere around two thirds of people against the euro, he also knows he has a huge job ahead of him turning opinion between now and a possible referendum half way through the next parliament.

In the last referendum on whether Britain should stay in the Common Market, as it was then, the Labour government had the same battle and did manage to shift public opinion.

In August 1974 47% of voters wanted to withdraw while 30% favoured staying in.

By the vote, in August 1975 and after a long camapign, that had been moved to 67% in favour of staying in and 33% against.

Tony Blair's Euro battle may have already now started.