So, yesterday Boris Johnson was at it again, leading the right wing grass roots of his party in either trying to score points against his leader, or trying to strengthen the leadership’s backbone, depending on how you view it. This time it was over a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty. Previously, he has banged the drum for a harder line against the 45 per cent and then 50 per cent tax rates on high earners.

Two points. One, activities such as these ought to start to make those who believe that Boris Johnson is an exceptionally liberal and cuddly type of Tory think again. In fact he is more than happy to give vent to the most right wing instincts of his own party’s grass roots. It can be see in his actual policies too – high fares but cutting investment, protecting the most-polluting drivers, promoting hedge funds and reducing pressure for cheap homes for rent, and so on.

Two, Johnson’s actual position on Lisbon, as with many things, makes no sense. As the Mail online reports:

Yesterday the mayor was arguing Mr Johnson had no such reservations. ‘I have the solution,’ he declared. ‘What we have got to do is to have a referendum. If Tony Blair is going to be President of Europe, I want a referendum on the matter, and a lot of people will agree with me.

The whole Blair-a-EU-President straw man is the favourite line of argument for the Tory right. William Hague was saying much the same thing last night.

Yet today Boris Johnson answers his own point, in his Daily Telegraph column.

‘I have a feeling that the Blair Euro-presidency will turn out to be a mirage,’ he writes.

If we are going to have a European President, there is a good case for having Blair rather than anyone else – and that is precisely why he won’t get it. For all his faults, Tony Blair is an Atlanticist, who understands the vital role of America in the world. He is instinctively a free-trader. He has earned such phenomenal sums from speaking to audiences of Right-wing Americans that we can safely assume that he is a defender of the Anglo-Saxon market economy. And that is why his candidature – if it ever really emerged – would not get off first base. It is not just that he is permanently and irrevocably identified with George W Bush and the dodgy pretext for war on Iraq.

Can you really imagine Nicolas Sarkozy being willing to share the international limelight with our Tony, when Blair is British, charismatic, and not remotely frightened of appearing in photocalls with people of more than five foot five inches in height? No, I will wager a fiver with any reader – proceeds to charity – that Blair will not be chosen as Europe’s president, if and when the Treaty of Lisbon proceeds.

So there you have it, Boris Johnson’s own main reason for having a referendum demolished by…Boris Johnson.  Boris Johnson’s argument may be summarised as Tony Blair may become President so we must have a referendum but Tony Blair will never become President.

Of course it shows why Labour ought to do something to kill off the Blair story – it is a complete sideshow that the Tory party loves to exploit.

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Footnote: Jon Worth’s blog discussed many months why Blair would not become the President of the Council. Read it here.