British Prime Minister Mr Tony Blair is under renewed pressure to rein in Chancellor of Exchequer Gordon Brown and define a clear route to British membership of the European single currency.
Downing Street admitted yesterday that the two men were still locked in "intensive discussions" about the terms of the chancellor's statement to parliament, due by June.
While Mr Brown is expected to say the Treasury's five economic "tests" have "not yet" been met, Mr Blair wants to keep open the possibility of a further assessment and a referendum on joining the euro before the next general election.
A further sign of Mr Blair's mounting impatience on the issue came with the intervention of Lord Simon, the former trade minister once described as the prime minister's favourite businessman.
Warning that continued uncertainty carried increasing risks for the British economy, he demanded that the Prime Minister and Chancellor promise to hold a referendum during the present parliament or else publish a "road map" for joining the euro.
At the same time, Mr Blair suffered a withering attack on his leadership from European Commissioner Mr Chris Patten.
According to Mr Patten, the so-called economic "tests" represented Mr Brown's "veto" over Number 10 and Mr Blair suffered "great damage" by seeming more ready to take risks to secure the goals of an American president than to secure his own vision of Britain's "destiny".
And there was further embarrassment for Mr Blair on that declared "vision" of Britain leading at the heart of Europe yesterday, when the Conservative leader Mr Iain Duncan Smith forced him on to the defensive over his opposition to a referendum on the emerging new European constitution.
With the existing commitment to a euro referendum providing the biggest battleground in the ongoing power struggle between Numbers 10 and 11 Downing Street, Mr Blair told MPs there would be "the fullest" cabinet discussion before a final decision .
Joining the concerted Europhile push to wrest the sole power of decision from the chancellor, Lord Simon, writing in the Daily Telegraph, insisted: "It's absolutely right that the chancellor should give his judgment on the tests but the prime minister is the First Lord of the Treasury and we run major decisions through a cabinet system."
Increasing the Blairite pressure on Mr Brown, who reportedly wants to rule out a referendum for the lifetime of this parliament, Lord Simon added: "If he takes a line that we [the European and British economies] haven't converged adequately in his view, then he should say what he's going to do to make us converge, because I would want some convincing that we haven't."
According to Lord Simon, the government had to "move from the 'in principle yes but we don't know when' to the 'in principle yes and our timescale is this'"scenario.
