Heseltine tells Blair: join euro

MICHAEL HESELTINE is ready to break Tory ranks and campaign for Britain to join the single currency - if Tony Blair agrees to lead the crusade.

The former Deputy Prime Minister coupled his offer to join an all-party campaign with a strong attack on Mr Blair's failure to "come off the fence" and declare the Government intended to join the euro.

Last night Mr Heseltine described Mr Blair as "the real villain of the piece, the real villain of Europe" because he knew the longer Britain waited, "the worse deal we will get".

Mr Heseltine said, on BBC Radio's The Week in Westminster programme: "He is now indulging in his classic political posture of never offending anybody. Well, you can't govern in that context. You have to be a leader. He's signally failing to be a leader."

Mr Heseltine suggested that he and other pro-EU Tories, such as Kenneth Clarke, would defy William Hague by endorsing a move by Mr Blair to join the single currency.

"It is up to him to give a lead. When that happens, all sorts of things may happen. Public opinion might move, a whole range of people might start arguing the pro case," he said.

But he warned Mr Blair that the campaign on "the most overarching issue of our time" would have no credibility unless the Prime Minister led it. If he failed to do so, he would be "guilty of the abdication of British self-interest".

Mr Heseltine dismissed as "incomprehensible" Mr Hague's policy of ruling out British membership in this Parliament and the next.

Tomorrow Mr Blair will try to boost his European credentials with other EU leaders by signing up to Labour's most positive European policy statement so far at a meeting of socialist party leaders in Vienna.

They will approve a joint manifesto for the European Parliament elections in June,calling for economic and tax co-ordination. It also unreservedly backs the single currency, and goes beyond Labour's position in several areas.