MR John Major last night launched the European front of his reelection campaign here with a fighting speech that tore into the "European Social Model".
Combining a strong reiteration of his commitment to the idea of a Europe enlarged rather than integrated, the British Prime Minister warned, however, that the rest of the EU faced economic ruin unless it learned the lessons of the British Tory revolution.
"Our enterprise economy is not negotiable," he told an invited audience at a Brussels Euro-sceptic think-tank. "To me the choice for Europe is simple. We can either stand up and be counted or lie back and be counted out."
Mr Major's speech is the clearest indication yet that, far from avoiding exacerbating the divisions in his own party by putting Europe on the back burner, he believes he can make electoral ground by waving an anti-European flag on social policy.
The prospect of Europe being central in the campaign were also strengthened at the weekend when Labour's shadow foreign secretary, Mr Robin Cook, defined a gulf between the two main parties on the single currency issue, providing significant reassurance to Dublin.
Mr Cook admitted it would be difficult to argue the case for staying out of monetary union after 2002 if the single currency had by then proved successful. It was an admission on two issues that would be inconceivable at present for the divided Tory Party - it gave a timetable for possible entry within the next parliament and clarified that the issue for Labour was not one of principle.
Labour strategists are believed to be not unhappy at Mr Major's decision to make an issue of the Social Chapter.
The attack on the European Social Model, they will argue, is an extremist attack not just on the ideas of social democracy but on mainstream European conservatism.
But Mr Major was keen last night to establish his European credentials. "Today the notion of war between the countries of western Europe is unthinkable. And the credit in no small part goes to the European Union. Peace is the price that the project of Europe has won.
He argued, however, that Europe was doomed if it continued to sap its competitiveness through regulation. The failure was marked by the reality of 18.5 million unemployed "the size of Denmark, Finland and Sweden together.
In the last 20 years, the US had created 36 million new jobs of which 31 million were in the private sector. In that time the EU only created 5 million, of which 1 million were in the private sector.
