The thing that won't go away

摘要

It was supposed to be a great day. But the grinning and back-slapping of the heads of government who assembled in Brussels on October 29th to sign the draft European Union constitutional treaty was even more forced than usual. For President Jacques Chirac of France and Chancellor Gerhard Schroder of Germany, the document falls far short of their integrationist ambitions. For the leaders of most of the smaller countries, it gives too much power to the "bigs". But for Tony Blair, it's much worse than that. Even though Britain's negotiators (to the irritation of the French and Germans) managed to get much of what they wanted, the document that Mr Blair was putting his name to will quite probably cost him his job. It is still possible that voters in one or more of the other signatory countries will vote the treaty down before Britain holds its referendum in 2006 (March has supposedly been pencilled in-ten weeks after the end of the British EU presidency). Were the cantankerous French to give it the thumbs down, it would be a death sentence for the treaty.