If Tony Blair cares about his legacy, why did he give up our rebate?

After all the talk of reforming the EU farm subsidies, Tony Blair has again proved his supreme skill: the ability to talk tough, without actually achieving anything.

By caving in to France and reducing our EU rebate to the tune of £1 billion a year (in return for a vague reassurance from the French to review the CAP), all he has done is vindicated an EU policy the UK ambassador to Poland has described as "the most stupid, immoral state-subsidised policy in human history, give or take communism".

And why did Blair surrender our rebate? Because faced with opposition from EU members to his proposals, he preferred to be a "good European" and reach a last minute compromise, rather than put his own countries interests first and walk away without an agreement.

As Blair's days in Downing Street draw to a close, he is frantically trying to achieve some kind of legacy. That being the case, EU reform would have been a suitable place to start. Here we have a common agricultual policy (CAP) that eats 40% of the EU budget. Eighty per cent of CAP subsidies go to the largest 20 per cent of farms, many of them in France. By contrast, 70 per cent of farms receive less than £900 a year. And little if any of this subsidy goes to help the poorer countries of Central or Eastern Europe. And then there's Africa: Blair had a golden opportunity to argue that agricultural reform also means opening European markets to African farmers.

Had Blair stuck to his guns, there would have been a stalemate, but who's fault would that have been except Brussels?

The whole sorry episode exposes just how weak a Prime Minister Tony Blair is, that he considers it more important to give in to the interests of an unelected transnational institution, than to stand up for fair trade, and the interests of his own countrymen.