In all the long, glorious history of Hampton Court, there have probably been few more pointless meetings than yesterday's EU leaders' summit, which has done precisely nothing to aid the vital process or EU reform.

Tony Blair has been in power for over eight years, but the story of his time in office is perfectly encapsulated in the past four months - the months that have elapsed since Britain took over the presidency of the EU.

His handling of the EU leadership exemplifies his behaviour more generally in government. It's the Blair story writ small: a great start, with all sorts of welcome promises, and then a near-total failure to deliver. Instead of making progress, we go backwards.

When the Prime Minister set out the aims of the UK presidency back in June, he warned, quite rightly, that the EU faces a "crisis in political leadership - only by change will Europe recover its strength, its relevance, its idealism". At a press conference on the first day of the British presidency, he elaborated on the changes which would be needed, such as "the need to make sure that the regulation that comes out of Europe does not impede competitiveness of our economy, or interfere unnecessarily with the lives of our citizens." He continued: "We also want to make progress on the Services Directive and the Working Time Directive" - EU jargon for measures to achieve a more competitive labour market and economic climate.

It was all good - and necessary - stuff. When Baroness Thatcher was ridding
us of the 'British disease' and putting our economy back on track, the French and the Germans sat back and sneered that their model was superior.

How wrong they were. Today, they are feeling the ever-worsening effects of their failure to reform their economies. But when Mr Blair was setting out his agenda, he was making it clear that we could not afford to sit back and take our turn to sneer at them. The ever-deepening, ever-expanding influence of EU rules means that an uncompetitive EU inevitably causes an uncompetitive UK. And with most of our trade now conducted with other member states, it is in our direct interest, too, that they are prosperous.

So here at last, it seemed, was an EU leader who was prepared to face up to the need for the EU to reform, and for the world's largest trading bloc to place competitiveness at the heart of those reforms.

How naive we were. I spend much of my time in Brussels, and the British
presidency is now widely regarded as a busted flush. In four months, it has achieved almost nothing, and certainly nothing of lasting importance. Reform has been non -existent. Given Mr Blair's record so far, there is more chance of Jose Mourinho resigning from Chelsea to become a goat herd than there is of anything worthwhile emerging from the remaining two months of his presidency.

In fact it's worse even than that. Compare Mr Blair's speech to MEPs in Strasbourg on Wednesday with his words to them back in June and it's difficult to see how it could have been the same man speaking. In June, he set out his reforming stall, talking tough and pointing out how much needed doing. This week he lay down on his back and asked to be tickled on the tummy by the Euro-fanatics as he caved in on a series of critically important issues which go to the heart of both the EU's competitiveness and, indeed, of the very principle of self-government.

Take tax. It has long been the ambition of the European Commission to grab
control of tax rates from national governments. As is its habit, it produced a paper for yesterday's Hampton Court summit calling for a "more co-ordinated approach [to taxation] at the EU level".

Leave aside the implications for self-government of effectively ceding such powers to Brussels. Concentrate instead on what that means in reality. The EU now has member states such as Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland which, because of their bitter experience of communism, are now firm believers in competition and capitalism. Many of their leading politicians were educated in the US and have been imbued with ideas of the free market and liberty. They are now growing at an astonishing rate, making up for lost time and prospering as a result of their low taxes and competitive economies. In large measure their prosperity is due to adopting the flat tax (an idea with which the Conservative Party is now toying). Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Slovakia and, soon, Poland all have it.

The sensible response of a country which wants similar growth is to reduce
its own taxes, or even to adopt its own flat tax. But when has sensible economics ever been part of the EU strategy? The response of the Germans and the French was to complain to the European Commission that the flat tax countries were stealing business while at the same time benefiting from EU payments, and that tax competitionshould be prohibited.

The rationale behind the Commission's plan for tax co-ordination is thus the precise opposite of competitiveness: it is to ban countries from reducing taxes below the high levels in Germany and France, and thereby protect their sclerotic economies from competition even within the EU, let alone from the rest of the world.

If Mr Blair had the least intention of tackling the EU's lack of competitiveness, he would denounce such a plan as the very opposite of what is required.

Instead, in his speech to MEPs, he actually urged that the EU's leaders support the Commission's plan. It is a breathtaking piece of cravenness.

Across a whole range of areas, Mr Blair has now caved in and adopted the mainstream EU approach, from a common energy policy, to a common university policy and a common research policy. The EU constitution might have been defeated by the French and Dutch voters, but what do mere voters count for? Far from leading the cause of reform, the Prime Minister appears now to be a fully signed up member of the Old Europe club.

Not that we should be surprised. For all his fine words at the start of the UK presidency, Blair and his government have spent the past eight years consistently undermining the cause of self-governance. It is just business as usual.