IT was a vintage performance. Tony Blair loves having something new to believe in and it shows. He may have begun his “I have a Eurovision” speech a bit tentatively, for the Brussels Parliament has all the intimacy of an aircraft hangar, but soon he was in full flow.

By the end, his hands and arms swooped like gulls over the sea. It was as if he was dancing with himself. That amount of swooping (not to mention swaying) is rare for Mr Blair.

In Britain he is much more controlled, and his movements jerkier. Perhaps he was simply carried away. “I am a passionate European!” he cried, his words disappearing into the vast space around him. This was met by boos. He claimed not to mind. In fact, he welcomed them. “It’s called demo-cracy,” he said. Well, no, it’s called being booed but it certainly sounds better if you call it democracy. They didn’t boo with any feeling again. Instead the clapping became more and more frequent. The day before, MEPs had been furious with what one called this “Blair Witch project”. Britain had wrecked the weekend’s summit and could not get away with it.

“Everyone said they were going to give him Hell,” one MEP said. “But they didn’t.” Well, they didn’t give him Heaven either. There was applause, but it wasn’t the heavy thwacks heard when an encore is being demanded. It was more than polite, however, for Mr Blair is hard to resist when he’s in one of his “I’m a Believer” phases.

He had to have written much of the speech himself. There was, for instance, this unique passage: “It’s time to give ourselves a reality check. To receive the wake-up call. The people are blowing the trumpets around the city walls.”

Upon hearing this, people started clasping their earphones with urgency. The translators looked a bit stunned, not unlike Hansard reporters during a John Prescott speech, for you can just imagine what all those wake-up calls and trumpets sounded like after being whipped into Slovenian.

It is fun to watch the translators. They sit in 21 glass booths around the chamber. The Italian ones gesticulate as if they are singing opera instead of talking about the Common Agricultural Policy.

The speaking arrangements are brutal. “The gentleman has two minutes,” the president, who is like our Speaker but without the ridiculous outfit, says.

MEPs are not allowed overtime. Someone tried this yesterday. “I’ve found the button now, you’re going to have to shut up!” the president said. Then he pulled the plug. Daniel Cohn-Bendit, of the Greens, had more minutes than most. He was on the barricades in Paris in 1968 and makes everything sound terribly exciting. “The gauntlet has been thrown down!” he shouted. “The Hundred Years ’ War is behind us.” (The French journalist next to me didn’t think so.)

Every once in a while, he whipped himself into a mini-frenzy to say: “Welcome to the club, Tony!” Tony, for his part, stayed in his chair more than three hours. It must be a record. There was a particularly dicey moment when the man from UKIP claimed him as a blood brother: “It all sounds like the same thing UKIP has been saying. You are a Europhile who has been mugged by reality!”

Mr Blair looked appalled but he’d better get used to it, for it’s going to be a wild ride.

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