Mr William Hague last night proclaimed "a blow for the independence of our country" as British Conservatives celebrated their first victory in a nationwide election in seven years.
The Tories exceeded their own private forecasts to win 36 of Britain's 84 seats on the back of an anti-European backlash which also saw the UK Independence Party claim three seats in the new European Parliament. Labour won 29 seats, and the Liberal Democrats a disappointing 10.
The outgoing Liberal Democrat leader, Mr Paddy Ashdown, attacked Mr Hague for fighting what he called of a "disgraceful" election campaign, accusing the Tories of riding to success on "an extremist tide." And Labour's Mrs Margaret Beckett warned the Tories their anti-Europeanism would "return to haunt them."
But a jubilant Mr Hague warned the prime minister to take heed of the results and stop trying to "bounce" the British people into ditching the pound. The Conservative leader - now seemingly secure against any early leadership challenge - called on Mr Blair to abandon a national changeover plan which he said had "no democratic mandate." And he accused the prime minister of stifling debate on the euro throughout the campaign. "Political parties who think they can bounce the people of this country into abolishing their currency without debating it properly have had something of a shock in this election, and I think they're in for a bigger shock in the future," he declared.
With Labour reeling from its first electoral reversal under Mr Blair's leadership, the Foreign secretary, Mr Robin Cook, warned the Tories they could draw no conclusions from a European election in which 77 per cent of the electorate stayed at home, and where just 9 per cent of the available electorate had been persuaded to vote Conservative.
But amid signs of a bitter party inquest already under way, there was no disguising the fact that Mr Hague's "in Europe but not run by Europe" message had galvanised his party's supporters, nor escaping the conclusion that the Blair government's honeymoon with the public was finally at an end.
The Prime Minister said his party would learn the lessons of "very disappointing" results which saw Britain contribute to the centre-right complexion of the new European Parliament. The final declarations in England, Scotland and Wales yesterday left the Conservatives with 36 seats, Labour 29, Liberal Democrats 10, the UKIP 3, and the Greens, Scottish National Party and Plaid Cymru 2 each.
Taking comfort where they could find it, one measure of Labour's relief yesterday was that it just managed to retain pole position in Scotland and Wales - beating off dramatic challenges from Plaid Cymru and the SNP by margins of just 15,000 votes. But the measure of the governing party's drubbing was that, in the end, it actually benefited from the switch to proportional representation, previously thought an act of government "generosity" certain to help its rivals. Analysts said Labour's take of the seats would have been reduced to a mere 15 had last Thursday's elections been conducted on a first-past-the-post basis.
The SNP leader, Mr Alex Salmond, declared the result Labour's worst since 1918, while Scots were treated to the rare sight of Scottish Tories cracking open the champagne in celebration at taking two seats - the party's first European representation north of the border in 10 years.
Liberal Democrats insisted they were delighted with "the reality" that they now provided European representation for every region in Britain - while playing down the reality that under proportional representation they would have won more seats in 1994. The Conservatives, too, were down actual votes - some 700,000 on their 1994 performance. But this paled beside Labour's loss of some 4 million votes from its 1994 bonanza, won in a mid-term verdict on the failing Major administration.
Reflecting on the lowest-ever 23 per cent turnout, Mr Blair said he understood "the concerns people have about Europe, the frustrations about Europe. But that's one of the reasons my government is fighting for change and reform in Europe."
However, Mr Blair was under fire for his perceived failure to stake a clear position on the single currency issue. As Labour's inquest got under way, one obvious defence was that the Kosovo crisis had commanded Mr Blair's attention for most of the campaign period. However, this also underlined both the extent of New Labour's dependence on its leader and, the curious fact that there appears to have been no "khaki effect" playing to Labour's advantage.
The inevitable search for scapegoats turned the spotlight on Mrs Beckett, who denied having taken a holiday during the campaign, but seems doomed anyway to lose her role to a high profile campaigner like Dr Mo Mowlam in an eventual reshuffle.
More critically, from the longer term perspective, the debate begun in the aftermath of last month's Welsh Assembly elections now seems set to be resumed about the extent to which Mr Blair's courtship of Middle England is contributing to the alienation of Labour's traditional supporters.