MR JOHN MAJOR said yesterday that the British general election could be as late as May 15th, 1997, but in fact it would be no later than May 1st.
He said the final decisions in the Inter Governmental Conference (IGC) at which the new shape of the EU is being thrashed out would be decided in the last hours of the EU summit in Amsterdam in June 1997 - after the British election.
"It's still in our interests, very heavily in our interests, to be a major player in the European Union as a whole. But it is not in our interests to go down a route which would be unpalatable to the British nation and very probably unworkable in the future."
Asked if he would choose national over party interest "even if it cost you an election", he replied: "I shall choose the national interest."
Mr Major said that if any country proceeded with the convergence criteria being improperly met there would be, "damage to the whole of Europe".
He said rumours that the Chancellor, Mr Kenneth Clarke, would resign if the government changed its policy and ruled out joining a single currency were "complete rubbish".
Asked about Sir George Gardiner's warning that he would no longer back the Chancellor's European policy even if it cost him the whip, Mr Major said he was surprised to hear it. "When George was facing reselection some time ago, I believe, he saved himself by saying he was a government loyalist. So I'm extremely surprised to hear him saying that."
He said mavericks such as Sir George and others did not matter. "They would have been irrelevant if we had not had a very narrow majority. Now, because we don't have a majority, any one single backbencher can have his moment of fame if he decides that he is going to be difficult on any particular issue of policy."
He asked if some backbenchers seriously wanted to have Mr Tony Blair negotiating for Britain at the Amsterdam summit in June 1997.
"Do they want him under pressure to give away our border controls and asylum and immigration controls?"
He added: "I can just tell you I'm not going to be held to ransom by any single MP on any single policy. We've set out our policy and we're going to get it through. If we don't get it through, then, we don't get it through, but I'm not going to have the government bending and weaving away from the things that it believes are right on the basis that somebody's trying a bit of pork barrel politics or a bit or of arm twisting of the government because it has a small majority.
"And I'll tell any of our backbenchers who have that in mind - they won't get much warmth from the party activists up and down the country it they imperil what this government has achieved and what its predecessors have done over 18 years because they have a bee in their bonnet about a particular policy."
Asked if he was "a bit fed up" and sometimes thought of quitting, he said: "But I love politics. . . There's still a lot to do".