Pox on the Brits !

L'histoire est vite écrite.
Ce matin, donnant la tonalité générale des médias responsables, la radio Europe 1 désignait tout uniment un coupable de l'échec du sommet de Bruxelles : Blair qui nous sort des obscénités du genre "L'Europe a changé depuis 1948" et "Revoyons la PAC"
Salauds d'Anglais ! Faudrait leur couper le tunnel !
La vérité, c'est qu'il faut habiller le triomphe diplomatique de notre négociateur en chef : La PAC est toujours debout (Eh, les céréaliers, à qui on dit merci?), le budget communautaire n'est pas augmenté et la stature de la France est plus haute que jamais, comme le chèque britannique.
Après 2007 le déluge ?

En attendant, pour ceux qui veulent écouter plus loin que Europe 1, voilà un article du Guardian de ce matin, qui décrit l'ascension incroyable de Tony Blair vers le statut d'arbitre de l'Europe. C'était pas gagné, il y fallut le coup de main de notre Pilote national.

At the close of the last summit in Brussels in March, Tony Blair gave President Jacques Chirac a little gift to help him through the French referendum on the constitution. He agreed to put the controversial services directive on the backburner, even though it was the kind of liberal market reform Britain cherishes.

As Mr Blair boarded the plane home, word came to him that Mr Chirac had responded by pocketing his present and demanding the British rebate in the EU budget be abolished. All the plane's passengers, including Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, were angered by France's ingratitude. Mr Blair smiled, lifting his eyebrows, a clear sign that he was furious.

He knew months ago that last night's summit would be fraught but he did not know that events would unfold so dramatically, nor that the summit would leave his leadership position in Europe under such serious scrutiny.

Mr Blair sounded emollient after last night's failure, but he has put himself at the helm of an anti-protectionist, pro-reform group. He will win all-party support at Westminster for doing so.

His critics in Europe, led by the French, said he he had dressed up British self-interest in bogus garb at a time when the EU desperately needed solidarity. The British rebate was always vulnerable to attack, and France, having plunged the EU into its deepest crisis by losing its referendum on the constitution, saw a chance to steady its ship at home and restore its leadership especially amongst the new accession countries, such as Poland, normally a strong British ally.

But Mr Blair has also seen the crisis as the best opportunity in 20 years to put the distinctive British vision at the heart of Europe, especially reform of the Common Agriculture Policy. He believed the crisis created by the no votes in the Netherlands and France meant the leadership of Europe was in play. With Mr Chirac dubbed the sick man of Europe, and the German chancellor Gerhard Schröder likely to be ejected in September in favour of the more Atlanticist CDU leader Angela Merkel, Mr Blair saw an unparalleled chance to reshape Europe in the British interest.

In his tour of European capitals last week, he was remorseless in arguing that the EU budget needed to be rethought for the 21st century. He has had to play his difficult hand with due diplomacy, and not risk finding himself too far in the vanguard. So he was reluctant to say out loud that the British referendum on the constitution was suspended, let alone dead.

Instead, he worked the Danes - the next in the firing line - to agree that further plebiscites would be masochism, thus countering the French view that the referenda should continue. In the words of the former Foreign Office minister Denis MacShane: "Even lemmings have got a right to stop at the edge of a cliff."

It took a few more weeks for the French and Germans to accept in public that the ratification process was dead. At this summit, the penny was allowed formally to drop. There will be reflection, but equally important, it appears the French agree with the British view that Europe is losing support due to its failure to deliver on bread butter issues such as jobs and security.

But Mr Blair's goal of playing the statesman over the budget and the British rebate was always going to be more difficult. With the domestic press on his back and the rebate developing a totemic status to rival that of Gibraltar, he struggled to find a vocabulary that defended the principle of the rebate but did not mimic Thatcherite threats to veto. He could end up isolated accused by the EU majority of being solely responsible for an impasse. With the British presidency looming and the euro trading weakly on the markets, too narrow a pursuit of British fiscal interest would forfeit Mr Blair's leadership credentials.

As he toured the capitals he widened the debate from the rebate to its cause, the proportion of the budget swallowed up by agriculture due to French intransigence. But Mr Blair was under pressure because the British position on the rebate is hard to sustain. As a result, he proposed to UK allies in the new Europe that parts of the UK rebate could be handed back to them. Last night there was relief in Downing Street that the prime minister right had not ultimately found himself in a minority of one.