Far better to get the whole debate out into the open, Mr Straw argued.This appealed to Mr Blair, who has long wanted to settle Britain’s “half-in, half-out” relationship with the EU. He had hoped to do so by leading Britain into the single currency, but was blocked by Mr Brown and Britain’s stronger economic performance than the eurozone.Mr Blair was persuaded that he could slay the “myths” that the constitution would create an EU superstate by offering a referendum. Labour’s private polling shows that people think the constitution would force Britain to join the euro and give up control of its defence and foreign policy. As one senior source said: “If you take the referendum out of the equation, people will focus on the detail of the constitution.

Having a referendum will help that.”Mr Blair knew that a referendum would cut the ground from under the revived Tory opposition in the run-up to the European Parliament and local government elections on 10 June and the general election expected in May next year.Government whips warned him that the House of Lords would almost certainly vote for a referendum when the Bill implementing the constitution came before Parliament.”Why not get the credit for it – and win some brownie points from the Murdoch press at the same time?” some advisers told Mr Blair.Cabinet ministers do not believe Mr Blair will serve a full third term if he wins the general election. Winning a referendum on Europe might at least allow him to go out on a high note.But some Europhiles fear that Mr Blair will never tame the monster of the Eurosceptic media, a view reinforced by the hostile response to his move in yesterday’s Sun and Daily Mail. A viewers’ poll on Mr Murdoch’s Sky Television showed that 86 per cent of people oppose the constitution and 14 per cent support it.”This is terrible; we will lose the referendum and it will set back the European cause,” one Europhile said last night
More from Andrew Grice. “I want to stop I know I want to stop. I don’t want to die for nothing, but the bad things I have done to my body make me feel I have chosen death.” So said Diego Maradona, five years ago, when he was just 38. But he was not quite as passive or as pessimistic in his attitudes as this dark, upsetting statement suggests

“I want to stop I know I want to stop.

Recent events have borne out only too clearly the fears of all those who worried that since his return to Argentina his recovery had run aground.Maradona’s decline has been steep and relentless, as spectacular and inexorable as his rise. Born in the slums, his footballing talent was apparent by the time he was three, his fame was spreading by the time he was 10, and his first million had been banked by the time he was 22. He has been called “the greatest footballer on the planet”.But the truth is that the adulation, the fame and the money have not done him any good at all. It has become a truism to point to the taboo- and law-breaking antics of British footballers, and put them down to poor education, inflated wages, too much attention and too little responsibility. The same goes in spades for Maradona, who also is considered, by himself and others, as representative of Argentina’s very nationhood. Only recently he proclaimed that “Our [World Cup] win in 1986 was revenge for the Falklands It was like beating a country, not a football team.