Once again, Europe threatens to devour another British PM

In British politics, the Europe question always comes to embody the problems that a Prime Minister faces. So Gordon Brown will fly back from Lisbon with a treaty that emphasises that he is scared of putting things to the country and that he spins just as much as his predecessor ever did. With the ratification process expected to run for six months, Mr. Brown faces prolonged trouble over this document and maybe even his first large scale Labour rebellion. 

Only last month, the European Union Reform Treaty seemed to pose little problem for Gordon Brown. He had enough political capital to sign and dispose of this unwanted inheritance from Tony Blair. He’d face a few protests, rude newspaper editorials and captious opinion polls. But the whole episode was expected to amount to a brief period of turbulence in his otherwise smooth flight towards winning the next election. The outlook, then, was so blissfully different from the storm now looming.