Then along comes Mr Brown, waves his magic wand and returns interest rates to the Bank in a gesture comparable to Sir Geoffrey Howe’s abolition of exchange controls. What would have been denounced as a surrender to the sinister forces of City finance is now acclaimed as the wisest single action of the incoming Labour government. Could it be that the comparable transfer of power to Mr Duisenberg would come to be regarded in the same way?What is clear is that it is never going to be precisely the right moment to join up. Mr Tony Blair will want to join when he thinks he can win a referendum, which is not yet. It is doubtful whether Mr Brown looks at matters in precisely the same way Admittedly he is prepared to make all the right noises.

Writing in The Independent on Friday Mr Robin Cook (who now seems to be writing almost as many articles as Lord Hattersley) welcomes profusely Mr Brown’s expected intention to announce a “paving” Bill in the Queen’s Speech for the referendum on the euro.That will not happen till November In any case, it commits the Government to nothing at all It could lie on the statute book unused. With the Government’s majority as large as it is, a Bill setting up the machinery for a referendum could be passed in days A paving Bill is no more than a piece of public relations. It is surprising that a politician of Mr Cook’s experience and acuity should have been taken in by it.Besides, we have been here before. After 1997 an organisation was set up under the auspices of the Government ostensibly to urge our joining the euro.

Mr Kenneth Clarke got into trouble with his party for appearing with ministers on the same platform His Tory critics spoke truer than they knew. For the body in question was not really about the euro at all but about making somewhat vapid noises about Europe and, above all, accusing the Conservatives of wanting to take Britain out of the Union. There is no very convincing reason to suppose that the successor-organisation will be allowed to conduct itself any differently until such time, if it ever arrives, as Mr Blair decides he can safely hold his referendum.We are now talking about the old referendum, the one on the euro. It was first promised by Mr John Major when he was Prime Minister to try to preserve some semblance of unity in his party. It was taken over by Mr Blair in opposition, though he did not have the slightest need to do so His party was not divided as Mr Major’s was. He simply could not bear to seem to be giving the Conservatives any apparent democratic advantage.

The wretched thing has now been hanging over us for six years, longer if you include Mr Major’s period; which, as old Euclid used to say, is absurd. It now looks as if it will be hanging over us for a few years more.What could galvanise matters is that other referendum which (according to Mr Peter Hain) is not going to be held and has certainly not been promised, or not yet This is the one on the new European constitution. Nothing in the past few weeks has been more striking than the way in which ministers, privately and in public, respectively treat the allegations about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, or the lack of them, and the demand for a referendum on the European constitution.Iraq they pass off with a light laugh Who won the war? they ask With the referendum, by contrast, they look apprehensive. Indeed, it is not going too far to say that a hunted expression crosses their faces.