It is true that the Iraq war divided Europe and made it impossible for Blair to win wider support for his ambitious idea of a liberal interventionist world order. Progress on Africa and climate change will take longest, but Blair’s window of maximum influence closes at the end of this year, with the end of Britain’s simultaneous presidency of the EU and of the G8. Progress on public service reform, on the other hand, partly depends simply on Blair’s longevity in office. The longer he stays in No 10, the more the gains of market-style reform, particularly in the health service, will come through. With no referendum next year, his chances of surviving for longer have increased.It is often said that Blair’s achievements in office have followed the law of diminishing returns since the striking breakthrough of the Good Friday Agreement less than a year after he became Prime Minister I am not so sure.

This victory seems empty by comparison, but we should not underestimate the extent to which enlargement of the EU last year, followed by the implosion of the Franco-German dream of a constitution, creates the chance for Britain to assume a leading role at the heart of Europe. And, as luck would have it, Blair assumes the presidency of the EU next month, so that he can shape the Schadenfreude felt across the Continent at Jacques Chirac’s unforced error.Not having to fight a referendum in this country also gives Blair the time to work on the rest of his legacy. There is enough to do: a plan for Africa; the attempt to engage the US with the problem of climate change; and public service reform at home. Blair’s triumph over the forces of Euroscepticism may well be bittersweet This was not how it was meant to be. He wanted to hold a referendum on adopting the euro “early” in the last parliament – but it was never politically possible, or, rather, it was never economically desirable enough to make it politically possible. But he, too, could benefit from the sudden collapse of British anti-Europeanism.

Despite the fact that most voters agree with the Eurosceptics’ suspicion of Brussels, the obsessive quality of their rhetoric has had an alienating effect. The collapse of the constitution makes it possible for a clever Tory leader such as Davis to adopt a more constructive approach to the EU that might begin to heal the party’s historic rift over the issue.However, the main effect of the collapse is to provide space for Tony Blair to secure his legacy, as even Mr Watkins, no friend of the Prime Minister, observes on the opposite page. It has been suggested that the death of the constitution renders the Conservative leadership safe for Kenneth Clarke. Sadly for admirers of the man who laid the foundations of Gordon Brown’s economic success, among whom are numbered many former Conservative voters, some even who could be described as normal, the bookies still have him at 10-1. It would seem that David Davis, who has been described as the only man who can swagger sitting down, is increasingly assured of victory, regardless of the electoral system his party chooses. The Common Agricultural Policy? It is being reformed, albeit too slowly, but if British sceptics want to lend a shoulder to the Prime Minister’s attempts to speed up change, he would happily accept their support.That is it, then.

The poison that has infected British politics for so long has been drained. The issue that brought down Margaret Thatcher and John Major is not going to catch Tony Blair out after all.That has consequences for the Opposition as well as the Government. That killed Europe as an issue in the election, and now the constitution itself is dead. The Eurosceptics’ fox has not just been shot, it has been hanged, drawn, quartered and the bits laid out for public view. At last, Tony Blair has achieved something to which he has long aspired, namely a decisive victory over the forces of anti-Europeanism in this country And he didn’t even have to lift a finger. The voters of France and the Netherlands have killed off the European constitution for him.