AFTER Labour took a pounding in the European elections last month at the hands of a combination of stay-away voters' disdain for the EU and support for the Tories' keep-sterling strategy, Tony Blair was deemed to have started pedalling backwards - away from the Britain in Europe movement which wanted him on its bandwagon along with Conservative ex-Chancellor Kenneth Clarke.

But even if his now climbing aboard seems to have been timed for after the Eddisbury by-election - lest Labour was harmed there by the Prime Minister's clear pro-European stance - his pledge to strengthen Britain's role in Europe and, in effect, forge a cross-party alliance for this seems deliberately designed to marginalise the Tories who follow leader William Hague as a right-wing Euro-hostile group.

Indeed, he dubbed them - and the sections of the media who support them - as extremists who threaten exit from Europe altogether.

And although Mr Blair was adamant that Britain would not join a successful European single currency unless the economic conditions were met, there was a measure of unfairness in his calculated painting of the distinction between his - and his new allies' - desire for Britain to be a powerful player in the EU while maintaining a prepare-and-decide stance on the euro and that of the Hague Tories whom he now portrays as nascent nationalist secessionists. He has made it out as if it comes down to a choice of being pro-EU and leaning, albeit with conditions, to joining the euro, or keeping the pound and pulling out altogether.

It is nothing of the sort. The Tories' Euro-scepticism - which is probably the only policy with which the party has scored since the general election - is, in fact, succinctly stated in the "in Europe, but not run by Europe" slogan that it used to some effect in last month's elections and does not even rule out eventual membership of the euro.

It is, we believe, perhaps the closest to most voters' outlook - that of wanting to be in a European trading zone, but not governed by its remote and prescriptive politicians and being far from charmed by such EU excesses as expenses-grabbing MEPs, huge farm subsidies that keep food prices high and breed corruption and palatial parliaments that approve laws that subsume those of Britain and its sovereignty.

Mr Blair would do well to recognise that this is not extremism, but a reasonable reserve - that was backed at the ballot box.

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