Once again, Europe threatens to devour another British PM

In British politics, the Europe question always comes to embody the problems that a Prime Minister faces. So Gordon Brown will fly back from Lisbon with a treaty that emphasises that he is scared of putting things to the country and that he spins just as much as his predecessor ever did. With the ratification process expected to run for six months, Mr. Brown faces prolonged trouble over this document and maybe even his first large scale Labour rebellion. 

Only last month, the European Union Reform Treaty seemed to pose little problem for Gordon Brown. He had enough political capital to sign and dispose of this unwanted inheritance from Tony Blair. He’d face a few protests, rude newspaper editorials and captious opinion polls. But the whole episode was expected to amount to a brief period of turbulence in his otherwise smooth flight towards winning the next election. The outlook, then, was so blissfully different from the storm now looming.

The Prime Minister can expect to fly back from the Lisbon summit on Friday with a document which — whatever his claims to the contrary — might have been drafted specifically to symbolise all his alleged failings and to amplify the criticisms levelled against him since he ruled out a November election. His announcement in an interview with Andrew Marr that he would not be going to the country instantly sparked accusations not only of cowardice but of deviousness: the PM found himself accused on all sides of being unable to level with the British public, of evasiveness and running scared of the electorate. In the EU Treaty he has a document that seems to have been designed specifically to deceive them: to take the British people for fools, to borrow David Cameron’s favourite new soundbite. Mr Brown’s critics have always claimed that he governs by cabal and ignores his party.