WHEN ASKED about the quality he valued most in a general, Napoleon used to reply, “good luck”. But luck plays an even greater part in politics than it does in war and ascribing to good luck the success of a leader is not nearly as trite as it may appear. Politicians, like generals, can make their own luck through the way they respond to the unexpected — and no politician in living memory has made himself luckier than Tony Blair.

From the untimely death of John Smith to the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and even the tragedy of Diana, Princess of Wales, Mr Blair has always managed to make the right decisions and find the right words when hit by the unexpected. The referendums in Europe, if handled properly, could be among the greatest strokes of luck ever to befall a British prime minister — and all the signs are that Mr Blair is ready to turn them to his advantage.

In terms of British domestic politics this is obvious enough, since the French and Dutch votes have lifted the deadline that Mr Blair inadvertently set for his own resignation when he promised a referendum in 2006. But it is on the European stage that he (and Britain) could now enjoy the most spectacular lucky streak. To put the matter at its grandest, Mr Blair now has an opportunity to turn European politics in a new, pro-British, Atlanticist direction and to emerge as Europe’s dominant political leader, stamping the label “Blairism” on EU economic and foreign policy for the next decade.

How could a flawed political trickster, until recently despised and derided by many of his own country’s voters (myself included), hope to turn into a statesman worthy of comparison to Churchill, Roosevelt, Thatcher or De Gaulle? This is where we must consider the role of Lady Luck.

When Mr Blair returned from Brussels on Sunday after his confrontation over the EU budget, the initial view was that Britain had, as usual, overplayed its hand and been outmanoeuvred by France. President Chirac had achieved his main objectives: he managed to isolate Mr Blair and forced him to use his veto. President Chirac thus successfully distracted attention from his own referendum fiasco and proved that the main obstacle to the European project remained the treachery and selfishness of the British. As a bonus, the cunning ambush sabotaged Britain’s EU presidency, and has driven a wedge between Mr Blair and his incipient allies in Eastern Europe by forcing Britain to block an increase in funding for the East which was added at the last moment to the vetoed budget deal.

But this defeatist analysis has turned out to be completely wrong. President Chirac, far from returning to Paris in triumph, has been almost universally ridiculed for trying to distract attention from his own political failures by an irrelevant struggle with Mr Blair. The Prime Minister, far from being isolated in Brussels, was explicitly supported by Sweden and the Netherlands in the budget vote in Brussels and was quietly encouraged by the other Scandinavian countries, Italy and Ireland and, most importantly, by the conservative leadership which is likely to take control of Germany within the next few months. In fact, it now looks like France, rather than Britain, will become the odd man out in Europe, with President Chirac’s isolation only underlined by the insignificance of the only two allies he can still depend on — Belgium and Luxembourg.

Meanwhile, Eastern Europe, far from being alienated by the British veto, appreciated Blair’s proposal that Britain may give up the part of its budget rebate that is financed by Europe’s poorest member states. And the budget deadlock, far from sabotaging Mr Blair’s presidency, will actually help him, since he has now broken the taboo in British domestic politics over renegotiating the totemic rebate which Margaret Thatcher famously called “my money”. With the rebate now up for discussion, Mr Blair should be able to score an easy diplomatic “triumph” by making small further concessions in the next budget summit.

Beyond these tactical considerations, three more important messages have been sent to the whole of Europe. First, with France and Germany economically moribund and destined for a long period of introspection, the Franco-German alliance can no longer lead Europe, even if it could agree on the way forward, which it no longer can. Secondly, the EU founding fathers’ vision of a forced march to “ever-closer union”, driven by the Brussels bureaucracy and the French political elite, is no longer democratically acceptable. Thirdly, Europe’s need for strong but pragmatic leadership is greater than ever because the present course points straight to economic ruin.

The obvious candidate to fill this leadership vacuum is Britain under Tony Blair. Mr Blair’s Third Way rhetoric may seem half-baked and self-contradictory in the context of British or American politics, but trying to find a compromise between capitalism and social democracy is what mainstream politics in every European country is about. Moreover, Mr Blair, while he may be no great economic or political theorist, has a track record unique among the major European leaders, of running a Third Way model with a modicum of success.

It is not surprising, therefore, that Europe’s dominant parties from across the political spectrum — from the Right in Germany, Italy and the Netherlands to the Left in Sweden, Poland and Portugal — are converging on Mr Blair as the potential standard-bearer for a new vision of Europe which is less politically ambitious but more economically dynamic, a Europe in which many different “social models” can operate, and thrive.

The question, of course, is how Mr Blair can rise to this challenge with concrete policies, rather than mere rhetoric. This is the question I plan to discuss on this page next week.

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