ENGLAND'S great mariners used to have maps which marked the edge of the world with the terrifying words "Here be dragons". Now the maps, if the general election is anything to go by, have the dragons breathing fire from the beaches of France and Belgium.

The demonisation of Helmut Kohl in last week's Tory ad - Tony Blair as a glove puppet on his knee was truly remarkable. Germany's Christian Democrats are, after all, members of the same party in the European Parliament, the EPP.

Not surprising then the Chancellor, Ken Clarke, felt obliged to distance himself from the ad, describing the view that Europe was a threat as "paranoid nonsense". Edward Heath went further. It was "contemptible, unbelievable, horrible" and contributing to stoking up anti-German feeling, he warned.

Yet at the same time the Foreign Secretary, Malcom Rifkind, was talking about the danger to "the very survival of Britain as an independent nation state".

The fracture in the Tories, the Financial Times political correspondent observed, is "as wide as any it; has faced since the repeal of the Corn Laws 140 years ago". And he argues: "This election is stoking the embers of nationalism. Once lit, those fires will not be easily doused ... Europe has broken the Conservative Party. Mr Blair, though, will not escape the consequences.

But while the British election has become a blood sport, policy makers in Dublin will be viewing with serious concern what is happening to our nearest neighbour, at a time when Ireland too faces key strategic, defining choices. The Minister for Finance, Mr Quinn, puts it bluntly in terms of "opting for the past or the future".

The most immediate is about participation in the single currency, while in the longer term it is about Ireland setting its sails on a course to join an emerging inner EU core, while its closest traditional trading partner drifts, largely rudderless, on Euro-sceptical currents that may even take it perilously close to withdrawal in the years ahead.

It's not so much a matter of who wins - largely a foregone conclusion and both major parties have broadly similar policy positions but the manner of the campaign's fighting and tlie lasting impact on policy and parties.

The imminent launch of the single currency, the most important political and economic decision for Europe since the EEC itself was founded, has become the central symbolic axis of disintegration of British politics.

The issue has driven both government and opposition into the arms of the sceptics, with Labour's manifesto talking of "formidable obstacles" to euro membership. And the shadow foreign secretary, Robin Cook, has now said it is unlikely that Labour would seek to bring Britain into the single currency within the term of the coming parliament - that puts off potential British participation at the earliest to 2002 and probably realistically not until 2003.

The announcement is a hitter blow to Dublin and those optimists in Brussels who had hoped that once the heat of the election was over Lab our would carefully manoeuvre itself to a more flexible stance which might allows them to enter within one or two years of the launch date in 1999.

That hope had been predicated also on a more forthright pro-single currency stance by the leaders of British business once the election was over. Business sources in London say, however, that the CBI is still hopelessly divided and those who wish to see a single currency are less than enthusiastic about joining the fray.

Entry by sterling in 2003 would leave the pound locked in to the euro and vulnerable to downward movement by sterling for a full four years. It puts the scale of the Irish gamble in perspective, but is unlikely to shake the determination of the current Government to press ahead with early membership.

What it would do to a Fianna Fail-PD coalition is open to question.

On the other short-term European challenge, specifically at the treaty- changing Inter-Governmental Conference, Labour's election will make a considerable difference to the possibility of making an agreement at Amsterdam in June.

Labour is willing to discuss tending qualified majority voting in the first pillar - broadly, single market issues - and to sign up to both the Social Chapter and to new chapters on employment and the environment.

On institutional issues, Labour is unlikely to move the British negotiating position away from the camp of the large countries, favouring reweighting of votes and determined to extract a price for the possible loss of their second commissioner.

In the longer term, the opening of enlargement negotiations and discussions of the next round of the budget talks should also see considerable policy continuity from London, most notably on its determination to see the Common Agriculture Policy reformed and, if possible, returned to the responsibility of member-states.

IN THE longer term too, Europe is likely to remain centre stage on a British political scene - dominated by a bloody battle for control of the Tory Party on this very issue. (It is also worth asking whether bipartisanship on the North can survive this upsurge in virulent nationalism?)

Although Labour may be marginally less Euro-sceptical than the Tories, the columnist Ian Davidson argues that "neither of the two large parties has the foggiest idea how to deal with it", a problem they have both had for 50 years.

Yet, by now, he says "all the founding core members of the EU have strategies which are, if not identical at least compatible and increasingly convergent". To which he could add Ireland.

"This means," Davidson argues, "they are defining the choice for Britain: to join or to leave."