The final Blair–Brown battle

Fraser Nelson says that Tony Blair’s swansong summit next week is fraught with danger for Gordon Brown. The last thing the next Prime Minister wants in his in-tray is a new EU constitution that he has to sell to the British public

For what must surely be the last time, war has broken out between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. The surreal calm of the handover period has been fractured by a return to the bitterness, acrimony and threats that have been the dominant feature of government in the past decade. The Prime Minister has been told, rather than asked, to come back from next week’s European Union summit having agreed a treaty which the Chancellor can plausibly sell to the British public without being forced into calling a referendum.

Almost all of the main EU players have now agreed a plan which resurrects the main points of the constitutional treaty voted down by the French and Dutch referendums two years ago. They want to settle it all in broad outline next week — at Mr Blair’s last EU council of ministers in Brussels — then sign the new deal off perhaps as early as October. It is a careful stitch-up, almost two years in the making.

Would Mr Brown really pull the plug on all this as his debut on the European stage? Mr Blair thinks not. He has his own wish list ahead of the summit, concerned with wording, opt-outs and the finessing of legal language. As ever, he would be happy with half of his objectives. But Mr Brown is demanding he returns having made no concessions at all. ‘It’s a nightmare,’ says one of the remaining No. 10 staffers. ‘It’s like the TB-GBs all over again.’

Mr Brown’s anger is driven by anticipation of a potentially dire dilemma. His pitch as incoming Prime Minister is that he will be more transparent, open and honest than the shifty, grinning con-artist about to depart.