Still Hope for Brown in Brussels

Gordon Brown's cack-handed handling of yesterday's EU reform treaty signing achieved a difficult double. It won him no brownie points among pro-Europeans, at home or beyond Calais. But hardline UK Eurosceptics also gave his efforts a raspberry.

All is not lost. Downing Street has several reasons to be hopeful, despite Mr Brown's late arrival in Lisbon. Chancellor Merkel of Germany, who is at loggerheads with President Sarkozy of France over budget and agricultural reform (and who should be the new permanent EU president), would love to work more closely with Mr Brown, a child of the Protestant manse like her. David Cameron's EU stance is also a source of potential comfort. As he demonstrated in this week's Commons debate, William Hague, the shadow foreign secretary, remains as ardent a sceptic as he was when he let the issue ruin his own 1997-2001 leadership of his party.

Just as Ken Clarke's generation grew up as pro-EU Heathites, so Mr Cameron grew up as an 80s Thatcherite, though his foreign policy brains, ex-spook Pauline Neville-Jones, almost certainly knows better. Meanwhile the Hague line prevails and is popular among activists. Yet tabloid campaigns like the Sun's drive for a referendum provide little evidence that the voters share the headbangers' perspective. Hague wriggled on the Tory pledge to hold one again last night.

In reality the EU is a bit like Russia, as described by the Tory prime minister Lord Salisbury - always "too weak and too strong". As the EU commission president, José Manuel Barroso, suggested in Lisbon yesterday, six years of faffing about over the aborted constitution will end once the treaty is ratified by 26 parliaments and one (Irish) referendum, in Britain's case by the summer. Europe can then re-engage with the real world's agenda.

It will start when the EU's big four manfully recognise looming Kosovan independence in the New Year. Global free trade, Africa, climate change, there is plenty for a Merkel-Brown axis to address. Will Brown and his pro-European foreign secretary grasp the chance? The suspicion persists that Brown is happier at English-speaking jamborees, the IMF or (last month in Kampala) a Commonwealth conference, especially among those he can dominate. In 10 years at No 11 he never schmoozed much with those clever polyglot Europeans.

But the point can be exaggerated. Sarkozy does not speak foreign languages either. For all his pro-EU talk, Tony Blair avoided EU summits and dinners as much as Brown. But Brown starts at a disadvantage, assumed in Europe to be hostile. In visiting Iraq and Afghanistan last week he learned that travel can be helpful. Brussels is nearer.