Why Blair's battle for the euro needs to start immediately

IT'S INTERESTING to know that Downing Street has embarked, as it was reported to be doing yesterday, on a strategy of "bypassing" the national press because of its alleged obsession with "trivia, travel expenses, comment and soap opera." On the Independent we may be a little less obsessed with "trivia" and "soap opera" than some of our rivals. But the paper would be doing a serious disservice to its readers if did not continue to report "travel expenses" - especially if this is being used as a catch all term for all sorts of small ways politicians can fleece the taxpayer, or worse still, place themselves under obligations to all sorts of vested interests; or if it ceased to regard comment as part of its essential fabric.

Oddly, though, this could just be a significant, and not wholly malign, moment in the development of the Blair government. The reports were silent on the Europhobic propaganda which runs daily through the pro-Labour Sun, the biggest selling newspaper in Britain, and there is no sign that the Prime Minister's spokesman even had this in mind when he briefed the Sunday newspapers on his boss's rather different, and undoubtedly genuine, frustration that the metropolitan press do not focus enough on the big policy issues which affect the electorate at large. But it is the main reason why any hint that ministers intend to go over the heads of newspaper proprietors to lead public opinion is especially welcome just now. And if Tony Blair wants to use more live, Clinton-style television appearances to do it, that's fine by me.

For 1999 is surely the year that the Prime Minister will have to give a decisive lead over Europe. The British signature in Vienna on a firmly pro-Euro manifesto by the EU parties of the left this weekend was a staging post in his deeply Fabian strategy of gradually conditioning of the British people towards a single currency. The coming launch by the Treasury of its National Changeover Plan will be another. There has been some discussion in Whitehall about whether this could be a moment for the Chancellor and Prime Minister to ratchet up their commitment to EMU by stating more clearly than before the government's firm intention to join. But it now looks that while the announcement will be broadly positive, it will also be mainly technical, making it clear that British preparations are well advanced, but leaving the policy exactly where it was in the Gordon Brown's statement to the Commons in October 1997; roughly speaking, that Britain will join the single currency if and when the economic circumstances are right.

The view that this is unlikely to prove enough is not mere Euromania for the sake of it. In some ways it would not even arise if it were not pretty clear by now that British membership is what the government wants. But the question of timing is only partly a question of tactics. Even hitherto Eurosceptic ministers are now freely acknowledging that they cannot go into a second general election committed to nothing firmer than its current "prepare and decide policy". The latest figures from the National Institute of Economic and Social Research show that British and European interest rates are likely to converge around the first quarter of 2001 - removing one big obstacle to joining - underline that point. At some point therefore the policy will have to change. I happen to think that this will mean a long war of attrition with the press opponents of EMU entry and it would be better to start sooner than later. But I am not dogmatic about it. It may be just as tactically astute to do it much closer to the election. Nor would an early announcement necessarily mean the once widely forecast realignment of British politics. Steve Richards was certainly correct to point out on this page on Friday that Michael Heseltine and Ken Clarke, the big beasts of Tory pro-Europeanism, have no present intention of following the brave John Stevens and Brendan Donnelly out of the Conservative Party into the great adventure to which they are being beckoned: a new pro-European Tory party.

Moreover there are even the makings of an unwritten non-aggression pact on EMU in the European election campaign . As those around Hague are well aware, Clarke and Heseltine are much less likely to use the Euro- election campaign to destabilise Hague's leadership if Hague does not seek to make outright, adamantine opposition to EMU the central platform of the campaign. Since at least modest success in the European elections is a pre-condition of Hague's ability to silence his many critics in his own party, he may just buy that. Theoretically that eases some of the pressure on Blair to treat the European elections as a dress rehearsal for an EMU referendum; though it would be a brave man who would yet predict that the June European elections will not turn out to be a dogfight on EMU.

But the reasons for a 1999 declaration of intent go much further than that, further even than the increasing frustration of big business, to the threat that multi-nationals will pull out of Britain. It goes to the heart of the kind of Europe the UK wants. Blair came into office with a commendable commitment not only to Europe, but to European reform - political and economic. More democratic legitimacy, for example, through the greater involvement of national parliamentarians, and more flexible labour markets, free trade, and a more level single market. The arrival on the scene of Oskar Lafontaine as German Finance minister has made that more difficult. But what makes it much more difficult still is as the leading expert Charles Grant it baldly in a recent paper for the Foreign Office: "Britain's absence from the Euro weakens its influence on EU economic policy." The longer Britain keeps its slip hidden, the less easy it will be to shape the new Europe it wants. Two years may not be too long to make up in shaping British public opinion. It is a very long time indeed to forfeit a leadership role in Europe itself.

It is no good the government expecting industrialists to do their work for them. Pro-European ministers in the Thatcher government used to complain, in exactly the same way as Labour ones do now over EMU, that industrialists would not campaign more vigorously for ERM. But businessmen rightly believe that is what politicians are elected for. All of which brings us back the question of "bypassing" the Eurosceptic press. This is not merely a matter of EMU; it means a subtle change towards a more grown-up rhetoric - saying for example, the once unthinkable: yes, we will negotiate on the famous British rebate, but only if our partners are serious about Common Agricultural Policy. But EMU is the main event. And there is something thrilling about seeing the elected take on the unelected. It is democracy with the lights switched on. It was so at the Westminster by-election in 1930 when Stanley Baldwin accused Northcliffe and Beaverbrook of exercising the prerogative of the harlot through the ages. And it can be once again.