All hail, Tony Blair. Champion of a looser, flexible Europe, defender of the national interest and all-round seer, Mr Blair would have us – and the rest of the European Union – believe that we must follow him or be damned.

Speaking to the European Parliament yesterday, the Prime Minister introduced his presidency of the EU’s Council of Ministers by warning that the EU faces a “crisis in political leadership…Only by change will Europe recover its strength, its relevance, its idealism” - and so regain public support.

Well, yes. But there is just one problem with Mr Blair’s analysis of the EU’s woes and its possible solutions. Almost all of the most fundamental problems which now beset the EU have developed on his watch as Prime Minister. Worse, they have happened not in spite of Mr Blair but with his enthusiastic backing.

There are few politicians with worse credentials than Mr Blair on matters of European policy.

Take the euro, which was foisted on hundreds of millions of Europeans without their say-so, and is locking them into a downward spiral of stagnation and unemployment. Who was it who committed the British government to joining the euro in principle, as one of the first decisions of his time in office (even if the practical downsides have been such as to make membership all but impossible)? Step forward, Tony Blair.

Those of us who argued from the start that the single currency was misconceived, and that membership would be a disaster, were dismissed by the Prime Minister as xenophobes who were living in the past. It was, he told anyone who would listen, his destiny to take Britain into the euro. Indeed, he has spent his entire time as Prime Minister attempting to rearrange the political furniture so that he could one day achieve his aim.

Thank heavens he has not succeeded and that we didn’t listen to him. Wiser heads – as well as economic reality – prevailed. So great has been the ‘success’ of Mr Blair’s beloved euro that today, six and a half years after its introduction, Italian ministers speak openly about their desperation to return to the lira. So much for Mr Blair’s sagacity.

The “ever closer union” which has been the EU elites’ mantra since the Maastricht Treaty of 1991, has also been one of Mr Blair’s most passionate causes, as he has struggled to find a legacy. It is the Prime Minister who has been amongst the most eager to bring about deeper integration between EU Member States, across a vast swathe of areas.

To that end, he was insistent upon the need for the new constitution, so humiliatingly rejected by the French and the Dutch. He branded the objectors, who pointed out that it would further cement the end of self-governance, as Little Englanders. He could barely conceal his contempt for those who dared to question the Eurofanatics.

And never forget why he promised a referendum. It was not because he believed for a second in the electorate’s right to a say in how we are governed. It was for entirely base political motives. Had he stuck to his guns and denied us a referendum, the constitution would have been the biggest issue by far in the election campaign. With Labour’s support already haemorrhaging, the election itself could have become a de facto referendum between a Labour government committed to ratification, and a Conservative Party pledging rejection. And given the strength of popular opposition – the polls have consistently showed between 70 and 80 per cent against the constitution – that alone could have handed Michael Howard the keys to 10 Downing Street.

The referendum was a political fix, which got the Prime Minister out of a large election hole.

To give him his due, Mr Blair has at least – unlike many of his EU colleagues - heeded the lesson of the French and Dutch votes. He has realised that the constitution, as it stands, should be deemed dead and buried.

But the Eurozealots never give up. The latest plan to subvert the voice of the people is to ‘rescue’ parts of the constitution and enact them by diktat without a new treaty.

As he showed yesterday, Mr Blair is above all a brilliant political chameleon. For the past eight years, since taking office in 1997, the Prime Minister has been doing one thing consistently well: being wrong about the most basic and important matters of European policy. On the euro and the need for deeper integration, he has spent years campaigning for policies which have been rejected out of hand whenever the public has been given a voice.

Now he stands before us, and the European Parliament, with the gall to pretend that he is the lone sane European, telling it as it is.

Come off it! He and his government have spent the past eight years consistently undermining the cause of self-governance. If, instead of pushing for an “ever greater union”, Mr Blair had pushed the idea that Member States should be in Europe but not run by Europe, the EU would not be in today’s chaotical crisis.

It is not as if Britain is a lone voice, or a marginal force. The truth of the matter - which the Europhiles deem too impolite to be mentioned – is that Britain helps bankroll the EU. In 2003 (the last year for which we have figures) Britain paid 9.97 billion euros into the EU budget, but received only 6.22 billion euros in return – a tribune to the EU of nearly 4 billion euros.

Despite the recent posturing over the rebate, that gives enormous bargaining power to a Prime Minister prepared to do what Mr Blair has spent the past eight years avoiding – leading the battle for a slimmed down, more efficient, more flexible EU.

The truths which Mr Blair outlined yesterday are welcome, even if it has taken him eight years to reach them. Maybe he really will use his time in the presidency to help shape a more sensible and worthwhile EU. The new Member States who were, until very recently, under the control of the Soviet Union, certainly do not want to exchange one empire for another, and share the traditional British vision of more flexible labour markets and enterprise.

But when the Prime Minister says that “The people of Europe are speaking to us. They are posing the questions. They are wanting our leadership. It is time we gave it to them”, we should look closely at his dreadful track record in Europe. The chances of his words amounting to more than hot air look slim indeed.