A blurred vision that came into focus

LET US be frank. As those modest boxes are placed in the church halls and primary schools, no one has any idea what this short and savage European election campaign has done. Because of the low turnout in such elections, the polls mean even less than usual. The candidates have been trying to cover constituencies that are too large to canvass in the conventional way. The national politicians have been travelling the country in party-political cocoons.

Conservative Central Office is pretty sure that, over the past week, things have been swinging the Prime Minister's way. There is just enough caution in the opposition camps for this to be true. But really, everyone is in the dark, which adds a little last-minute drama to the democratic festival. For any voter still wondering whether to vote, there is the added incentive of participating in a national surprise.

Until the results come in, all we can say for sure is that the Conservatives have had a more successful campaign than seemed possible a couple of months ago. What has happened, most unusually, is that the dross of tactic has become transmuted to the gold of vision - albeit a dangerous one. The opt- outs negotiated before and at Maastricht were essentially opportunistic manoeuvres designed on the hoof to prevent the Conservative administration breaking up. But that tap-dancing is now being portrayed as the first firm, deliberate steps towards the new 'flexible' Europe which fits the mood of the times.

Douglas Hurd, speaking yesterday at the last Tory press conference of the campaign, made the point very clearly. He asserted the Government's rights over 'the kind of flexible framework for which the Prime Minister argued successfully at Maastricht on Britain's behalf. Since then we have won steadily wider acceptance for our approach.'

This claim has been the bass drumbeat echoing through the Tory campaign of the past fortnight or so: Mr Major was out ahead, he saw what was coming, he is now being vindicated. But before history closes over the subject, let us say: it didn't seem so at the time. First, it was not the Major Tories who started this. The need to give the British an opt-out from economic and monetary union was live gossip among the continentals at the Rome summit of October 1990, when Margaret Thatcher was still in power.

The idea was firmed up by that staunchly Anglo-Saxon Tory, Jacques Delors, at an informal meeting of finance ministers in May 1991, when the President of the Commission came up with the idea of a 'declaration' which would allow the British parliament to decide later about joining EMU - the same model so repetitively claimed as the Prime Minister's big idea.

When it comes to the opt-out for the Social Chapter, the story is similar. These were compromises cobbled together because the British were being difficult. But they were not pushed from the first by Mr Major as part of a new vision of Europe. The Social Chapter opt- out can, for instance, be partly credited to Pascal Lamy, then working for Delors, as well as to Michael Howard, whose alleged willingness to quit office if Mr Major failed to keep to a tough line was a factor during the three days of the summit. Details of all this can be found in a biography of Delors published next week.*

After Maastricht, a tactical victory, Mr Major's views on European Union seemed confusing, led in different directions, and appeared inextricably entangled with his views on party management. It was only recently that the Major Vision has been proclaimed, partly authored, one suspects, by Mr Hurd. Ah, well. There is no reason to be censorious. Mr Major would not be the first politician to look back at a past of crisis management and find, in retrospect, that there was a pattern of principle there all along. Most political memoirs consist of little else.

He is, however, in the rare position of finding that his blurred vision of the past seems sharp and on the ball today. Multi-speed Europe doesn't mesh as easily with the Tories' other big message - the need for deregulation and low social costs to help to preserve jobs - as they pretend it does. You can have a centralised but deregulating and business-friendly Europe. Indeed, this sort of Europe is now favoured by the German and French governments. But the blurring of 'Brussels' and 'bureaucracy' works well enough in the semi-literate atmosphere of a campaign to have real impact.

So when the Tories mock Labour and the Liberal Democrats for failing fully to engage in the most up-to-date thinking about the EU, they speak only the truth. These parties have been away from the centre of things for so long, it's hardly surprising. And their insistence on making today's elections a 'referendum' on a stupendously unpopular politician is an obvious tactic.

Still, to those of us who value political ideas, the possibility that the Tories may benefit from a last- minute surge because of their readiness to talk about Europe is, in a curious way, comforting. I think they are playing with fire as they speechify Britain out of the core of the Union.

I suspect Mr Major will find the backwash of his nationalistic rhetoric causes him all sorts of problems once the campaign is over. I hope it does. But at least he has presented voters with an argument relating directly to the European Parliament. For that, if for nothing else, he deserves some grudging respect.

'Delors - Inside the House that Jacques Built' by Charles Grant (Nicholas Brealey, pounds 12.99).