There are occasions when a House of Commons event marks a turning point in political history and yesterday was one. A critical mass of Tory MPs quietly and sadly concluded that sooner or later Michael Howard will have to become their leader. Nothing much else happened: certainly not on the single-currency front.

Mr Howard contrived to pretend that it had. His response as Shadow Chancellor to Gordon Brown was profoundly mistaken, cunningly couched and brilliantly delivered. He was magnificent. That suits Mr Howard just fine.

The Chancellor was all over the place. Sketchy, repetitive and desultory, he appeared to have reduced 1,738 pages of briefing to the back of an envelope: he was at his feeblest. And that suits Mr Brown fine too.

For our Chancellor had done all he was asked. Indeed he had done more. He had given Tony Blair and the euro-enthusiasts a road-map to currency union. So fine an exercise in cartography did he supply that not only the motorways and A-roads were marked, but even the country lanes and cart-tracks. There was a highway called the Changeover Plan (haven’t we been down that one before?) and a welter of special committees to consider progress up and down the land: one for Scotland, one for Northern Ireland and one for Wales. Not content with this, Mr Brown mentioned that he expected deliberations “in the constituencies” too. It was a wonder he overlooked the parish councils. There was to be paving legislation for a referendum, too: everything, in fact, except the referendum. The missing feature was the place we were supposed to be going. This was beyond the margins of Mr Brown’s map, with arrows suggesting the general direction, but no distances.

Instead, “there will be a period of information and discussion,” said the Chancellor, unnervingly. One can visualise the marginal note: “Can’t you sex this up a bit?”

Limp promises of great debates and local plans were interspersed with economic gobbledegook which I swear Mr Brown took mischievous pleasure in firing at dazed MPs. “Who understands this?” shouted a frustrated Tory, to laughter. Nobody did. As the Chancellor expatiated on the interplay between interest rates, house prices and inflation figures, two lady journalists sitting beside me started giggling helplessly, in a way men long to do but never dare.

But as the lame phrases and economic gobbledegook flopped on to the Dispatch Box, the penny dropped for me. Mr Brown knew that this statement would not give currency union the push-start of which its supporters dream. It wasn’t meant to. Its purpose was limited and clear. After this, nobody could say that Mr Brown hadn’t tried.

At which point you might expect me to move back to familiar ground: the old, old story about a “rift” between Gordon Brown and Tony Blair. Michael Howard repeated it, delighting Tories. This statement, he said, was all about “papering over the cracks” between the Prime Minister and his Chancellor. Mr Howard was as wrong about this as he was in his second major assertion: that yesterday’s statement marked the beginning of a serious push towards bouncing Britain into joining the euro.

The truth, I believe, lies at 180 degrees from Mr Howard’s drift. Tony Blair and Gordon Brown are not far apart on the euro, or Europe; neither feels the remotest sense of urgency about monetary union; and even if Mr Blair were keener than Mr Brown, he has abandoned as hopeless the attempt to move his old friend forward. Neither now believes that Europe is central to the new Labour project.

For behind this statement is the story of two marriages: the UK’s troubled marriage to the European Union; and a Prime Minister’s turbulent marriage with his Chancellor. The first relationship is deep-frozen. The second is as strong and deep — if as volatile — as it has ever been.

Tony Blair knows that. He sat, bespectacled and greying yesterday beside his thunderous Chancellor, staring a little blankly into the middle distance: not unhappy but not entirely there, inhabited by a zen-like sense of the ineluctability of fate. Mr Blair looked like a president, watching his prime minister in action.

Europe is over, for the time being, and both partners in politics know it. I pictured the marriage bed, Tony sleeping uneasily as Gordon paces the floor, finally resolving to wake his mate.

“Tony, wake up. This European stuff — the single currency and all that — it’s just not going anywhere for now. I’ve got to tell you. I know you set your heart on it but we can’t afford it. I’m sorry, darling.”

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