Before jetting off to Washington for a pre-G8 summit spot of arm-twisting last night, Tony Blair hinted to the Financial Times that the cancellation of the UK referendum on the EU constitution may not mean the end of all parts of the treaty.
"It [the constitution] is a perfectly sensible way forward," he explains. "At some point Europe is going to have to adopt rules. You can't have a six month rotating presidency, it's impossible to do that."
That, linked with Jack Straw's suggestion yesterday that parts of the treaty, such as the subsidiarity principle, may be salvaged without the need for a new constitution or referendum, points towards a "picking up the pieces" EU summit later this month.
Second, Mr Blair's emphatic declaration that "The rebate is going to remain and I don't think anybody disputes that" sounds ringing enough. But as the paper points out, that falls just short of saying, as Gordon Brown does, that the £3bn annual rebate is "non-negotiable".
That wiggle-room may allow the PM, as rotating chair of the EU in the second half of this year, to eke out a deal on the 2007-13 EU budget that sees Britain keep its clawback – first negotiated by Mrs Thatcher – but freezes it in real terms.
Finally, Mr Blair sounds a reassuring note for his continental colleagues on the European social model. Aware that both the French and Dutch voters responded to claims that the constitution was an Anglo-Saxon "Trojan horse" for less regulated markets, the PM says emphatically: "I don't believe that Europe should relinquish a social model . We should have a strong social model – but one for today's world."
