What exactly is Gordon Brown up to? We must remember, first, that nothing this chancellor does is down to chance. This was brought home to me recently when a minister was comparing the different techniques used by his colleagues to answer Commons questions. Many mug up the morning before, planning perhaps a joke here, a jibe there. Gordon Brown, he revealed, picks out the three questions he wants to focus on weeks ahead - and launches a whole media strategy leading up to his answers. He is a tactician extraordinaire.

So now we hear that Brown has used the Prime Minister's excursions on the world stage to open up a defiant new flank in the battle over the euro. He makes an anodyne speech to the CBI conference in Birmingham. "Ha, a referendum in two years' time," his aides brief, "not on your nelly" - and the press dutifully report it as a slap in the face for Blair. There follows, predictably, "a rebuff" for Brown from Blair.

Does it add up to a row of beans? Sorry, but I believe the euro story in Birmingham was that nothing happened. Nobody said anything they hadn't said before.

The truth is that it is not in either man's interest to have a row over the euro just yet. The Chancellor is well aware that he has some unpopular decisions to take before long. The global downturn and the cost of the war are pushing his numbers the wrong way; tax rises are being hinted at, and he will need the Prime Minister's help to see him through the year ahead.

Furthermore, Blair's personal authority during this "war against terrorism" makes it a bad time to confront No 10 over Europe. It does not matter what Brown's spin-doctors say. Increasingly, we all realise that when it comes to the euro, if the statement isn't explicit and on the record, it doesn't mean much.

Blair, similarly, has at least two reasons not to want a row about the euro just now. Most obviously, he is too tired. Sketch writers were not the only people to notice how lacklustre and shattered he seemed at the CBI conference. He is totally focused on the war; he is working too hard, and it shows.

The more interesting reason, though, is that 11 September has not produced the sea change in favour of a single currency - or a more united Europe - that many people hoped, or feared, it would. Back then, it was thought that the menace of world terrorism and the interlocked fates of western countries would make the local issue of the pound seem almost trivial. In this newly dangerous world, we would all have to pull more closely together.

It has not, so far, turned out like that. The petulant anger of the smaller EU countries that were not invited to last Sunday night's impromptu summit in Downing Street said it all. The "war on terror" has only sharpened the two-tier Europe that was emerging at the Nice summit a year ago. Britain, France and Germany, sometimes joined by Italy and Spain, carve things up. The rest hop around angrily outside, but are generally ignored.

Eurosceptic Labour ministers are now saying that 11 September has revived the idea of the strong nation state, able to move fast and offer real military or diplomatic help to the Americans, while the timid and sluggish European bureaucracy can do nothing but wring its chubby hands. Tony Blair may still feel himself a Europhile, but the lesson cannot have been lost on him.

So what happens next? I don't get the impression that the pro-euro timetable of a referendum in 2003 is off the agenda. There is a lot of steam behind it. Nor would Brown necessarily deny the Prime Minister his moment in history. Brown, too, believes that one day we will be in the euro-zone. He is a "not tonight, Josephine" man, a chancellor with a headache, not a "never" man.

The past few weeks made the euro decision more difficult purely for domestic reasons. However upbeat the public message is about the British economy, the truth is that nobody knows how deep the downswing might be, or what political consequences will follow bad times.

New Labour has not been tested like this before. When the downturn does start to bite and certain taxes go up yet again, how will the electorate react? The Tory argument that this was precisely the wrong time to be experimenting with a new currency starts to sound sensible.

Where does all this leave Brown? By next year, he will seem, I think, a much more powerful figure than he does this autumn. The re-emergence of "real Labour" in recent weeks, with several decisions welcomed by the party's grass roots, from Railtrack and the abolition of vouchers for asylum-seekers to the reclassification of cannabis, may come to be seen as the moment when the new Labour tide turned and began to ebb. What's more, Blair's personal credit for zipping about the Middle East may not hold up so well when times get hard at home.

Nobody has built up Blair as a war leader more energetically than the man himself. But there is a long history of wartime leaders coming unstuck when they return to domestic politics. Brown is a master of the political pause, the strategic silence. As far as hard politics is concerned, he was silent in Birmingham. He is waiting.

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