“No advertisement may show partiality as respects matters of political or industrial controversy or relating to current public policy,” says the TV Code of Advertising Standards and Practice.Public controversy? What about adverts for Working-Out Barbie, the figure that launched a thousand columns of newsprint?Not that cancelling Third-World debt is that controversial. Christian Aid has made a commercial which dramatises the effect of accumulated debt in poor countries “The men we work for lend money to make money. You borrow, you pay it back,” say the debt collectors (one white, one black), as they take medicines, food and blankets from a Third-World baby.The advert has been banned. And that has been interpreted by the American courts to mean freedom of access to all means of mass communication.So, in the US, if enough people feel strongly enough about cancelling Third-World debt, they can club together to make a television commercial which tries to persuade their fellow citizens, and the American government, of the justice of their case.In Britain, they cannot. But the First Amendment takes into account that, in order to disseminate information and opinion widely, you need something more expensive than a soap box Hence the next clause, “.. or of the press”.

abridging the freedom of speech.”

In Britain, we have a lazy assumption: that you can say what you like as long as it is not defamatory, or obscene, or an incitement to violence or racial hatred.
Well, you can in the limited sense that you can stand on a soapbox in Hyde Park or Brixton. We are careless about freedom of speech in this country In the United States, they wrote it into their constitution Amendment number one: “Congress shall make no law … Both of the last two Prime Ministers believed that Britain had a mission in Europe; neither understood the realities of power well enough to carry it out.. But it’s as well not to shove that down the throats of the other EU leaders. What they really want to see, for the moment, is a renewed British desire to participate, and to do so on the same terms as everyone else, neither seeking special treatment nor wanting to opt out.But above all, remember rules one and two. But that is a legacy of the last government: we are lagging behind, and we have to fight to keep up with the big players.A degree of British leadership – or at least, British assertion – will be welcomed, neccessary even for the next year.

The Luxembourg row was, after all, about Britain wanting to opt in to something, rather than out. He has a hefty majority, he has a whole five-year term stretching out ahead of him, and he has the British presidency of the EU, starting in January. There are plenty of problems on the agenda – enlargement, reform of the Common Agricultural Policy and the budget – where a British perspective will be crucial.There are already some indications that things will be different in Europe under Labour. We do have influence, and France and Germany, as well as other nations which share our ideological perspective (especially the Scandinavians) rely on a British counterweight. But the British style of assertion – which is often unilateral, boastful and unrealistic – does not go down well.Mr Blair has, in truth, the best opportunity of any leader since Edward Heath of playing a leadership role in Europe. And that brings us to the third rule that British Prime Ministers need to remember in Europe: Britain does have a crucial role to play, and without it, the Union won’t, can’t work.Over the past decade the British critique of the EU has increasingly gained force, and indeed been taken on board.

Perhaps that is why Chancellor Helmut Kohl reminded the Prime Minister of some basic realities in Luxembourg, encouraging him to salute the French tricolour thrice, and the German flag once.None of this means we should shut up and do what we’re told; Mr Blair was quite right to argue his case. The rest of Europe is more used to compromise, consensus, coalition and deal-making.Because of our historical experience, we lack insight into the European process; we started late and we still don’t quite get the whole thing. The British political classes vacillate between regarding the EU as a fatuous irrelevance, or a deadly threat to their survival. And we find the Franco-German dominance of the EU hard to stomach, since it sits ill with our own rather solipsistic view of the world.All very well, then, for Mr Blair to trumpet British leadership of the European Union, but the leaders of the other 14 nations have quite a lot of experience of London’s delusions of grandeur. That has irritated people in a more important way, and the antics in Luxembourg will have made it a bit worse. Who the hell does this Mr Blair think he is?There are reasons why British ministers act like this Europe is very different from Westminister We lack a domestic political tradition of compromise.