THE prospect of an eventual referendum on Britain joining a single European currency moved closer today - despite the turmoil that his grasping of that nettle augurs for John Major.

For pro-European Chancellor Kenneth Clarke might yet walk out of the Cabinet if the Prime Minister concedes the principal of a referendum on the Euro.

And like-minded MP Julian Critchley, who might literally be the government's majority of just one after the expected Tory defeat in the South East Staffordshire by-election next week, threatens to bring the government down if he does pledge a plebiscite.

But Mr Major also has Euro-sceptic ministers in his Cabinet to accommodate as well as the back-bench Tory right, for whom a commitment never to enter a single currency without a referendum has a talismanic appeal.

And, perhaps, the electoral threat of Sir James Goldsmith's referendum party might have made the Prime Minister warm to pledges of a letting the voters decide the Euro-money issue.

Indeed, if such became an election promise, we think Labour might follow suit and maybe as these developments draw closer to this newspaper's surmise that no UK government could easily get commitment to European monetary union past the electorate without the consent of a referendum, the movement might also catch on across the Channel.

For though other EU-member governments are opted in to the creation of the Euro, their people may become less sure - especially as the unity process hardens and realisation sinks in that the franc, mark, lira, etc. face extinction.

And a more tangible token of loss of sovereignty is hard to imagine than removal of the national coinage in each individual's purse or pocket and its replacement with a new Brussels brand.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.