Read my lips: I won't give way

Major warns Eurosceptics, you'll lose us the election

John Major yesterday warned the growing band of party rebels and dissidents that they could be handing the next election to Tony Blair.

There were few signs last night that his ultimatum - backed by the threat of an early election - would work.

The Prime Minister prompted further angry attacks from the Tory ranks when he used a 50-minute BBC television On the Record interview to reaffirm the Cabinet's "wait and see" policy on the European single currency: "My position hasn't changed on these issues, and it is not going to change in the last few months before a general election."

But he twice warned his own MPs of the risk they faced if they refused to accept that.

"Everyone is going to have to decide whether they want the pragmatic, Conservative approach, or whether they want the massive extension of the European Union authority that would follow the election of a different government," he said. "Now that is a choice I invite my own party to examine."

Later, turning from the "trivial, absurd arguments, overblown and distorted as they have been" about his position on the single currency, he addressed the "Westminster froth" of Tory MPs threatening to withdraw support for the Government.

"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," Mr Major said.

"Well, the Government can't be held to ransom like this. We're going to continue with our policies and everybody will have to make their judgement whether they're going to support us or not. If they don't support us, then we may have a general election."

Clearly exasperated, he added: "Are you seriously saying to me that any of these backbenchers would rather have Mr Blair going off to Amsterdam in June to negotiate a social chapter?

"I am not going to have the Government bending and weaving away from the things it believes are right on the basis that someone is trying a bit of pork-barrel politics or a bit of arm-twisting of the Government because it has a small majority."

Taking a similarly unequivocal line on the single currency, Mr Major said: "It is in the national interest for Britain to be in there, negotiating."

As for the Eurosceptic suggestion that a "fudge" on the terms of single currency membership could provide the perfect pretext for Mr Major to rule out British participation in the initial launch of the currency, in 1999, he said that made it even more imperative that Britain should be part of the negotiations.

"Giving ourselves a red card now, and fleeing the field when the game is still to be played, seems to me to be a dereliction of responsibility,"

he said.

"If they're cheating, what should I do? Do my critics say I should stand aside and let them cheat, without playing any part in the negotiations at all? Where is the logic in that?"

Mr Major said the consequences of a weak currency would be disastrous for the whole of Europe. The breakdown of the European exchange rate mechanism had been bad enough. "That would be a teddy bears' picnic compared to what would happen if a single currency collapsed," he said.

"If all these things are going wrong, we need to try and stop them going wrong. Can you stop them going wrong, can you win a football match if you're not on the pitch? Of course you can't."

Mr Major then turned to the charge that he was trying to square the warring factions of his party. "It's not a question of appeasing people in the party or beyond the party... I need to look at the national interest way before the party interest, and I will." But the Tory Eurosceptics showed no sign of retreat in advance of this week's two-day Commons debate, the weekend Dublin summit - and the Barnsley East by-election that will formally wipe out the Tory majority for the first time since 1979.

John Redwood said no one was asking Mr Major to leave the negotiations. Brussels was now "knee-deep in fudge", and he added: "Most people in the party feel that you influence a debate by having a view."

Labour's Deputy Leader, John Prescott, told a Welsh Labour Party gala dinner: "John Major's 28th re-launch has failed to stem the tide of defections and the Tories now have more defectors than the KGB."

The Liberal Democrat leader, Paddy Ashdown, said: "He has at last said he will put the national interest before party interests. If he had established this earlier his party would not be in the mess it is."