With a new determination to drive ahead towards the single European currency being reported from France and Germany

With a new determination to drive ahead towards the single European currency being reported from France and Germany, the British view is sliding into irrelevance. Central bank governors meet in Frankfurt today, followed by ministers who are trying to get an agreement by the end of the year on the switch to new notes and coin by 1999.This may not be the Prime Minister's fault. He cannot voice support in principle, and argue about the details from within. Nor can he do the other decisive thing and declare that he'll have no part of it. Either course would split the party and precipitate a cabinet crisis. But the result is frozen immobility on one of the great questions of the day.On domestic political reform, the Major administration is committed to opposing almost everything.

On reform of the welfare state, the instinctive radicalism of Peter Lilley has run into the mud of daily life. Big welfare ideas, such as a minimum income, are now, it seems, unthinkable for the Conservatives this side of an election.There is education But then there is always education. Education is the big idea of the Conservatives, and of Labour, and of the Liberal Democrats And they are all ``passionate'' about it. And after the turmoil of the past few years, the school system needs another shiny new idea from politicians like it needs another budget cut.None of this means that the Tory party is doomed to defeat. Unlike the left, parties of the right can win elections by default. The great danger for the Government, though, is that their passivity on big politics will merely highlight the gimmickry of what's left, whether it be boot camps or crackdowns on single mothers.

I guess that when nine people out of 10 hear that the Prime Minister is fizzing with new ideas they feel irritated and uneasy, rather than intrigued.There is a parallel problem for Labour, however. Tony Blair has done an extraordinary job in establishing his own position and remaking his party. But the time when a Labour leader's victories over a Labour conference were received with national interest and enthusiasm is over Things have moved on. In late 1995, there is a hunger to know what Labour is excited about doing in power - exactly what they plan on social security, health, employment, pensions, rights. Is the party going to make the big leap on political reform, or pause at the edge? What really riles Blair about the environment, and what is he going to do about it?Leadership is about party management, of course. The eye-catching risks that Blair has taken, and the long doggedness of Major, are forms of courage that deserve applause.

But as politics cranks up again for another year, it is not a bad time to remind ourselves that they are secondary. The highest form of political leadership, the gift that inspires, is persuading people that you are really going to change something. And as the party conference season looms, that basic, that primary kind of leadership is what we are still waiting to see.. Yesterday I was talking about baked beans, in honour of the fact that Mr Heinz started trapping these poor little things in a tin a hundred years ago, and today I want to go back in time to 1852, more than 40 years before Mr Heinz first put a baked haricot bean in a tin, and quote this from Charles Francatelli's A Plain Cookery Book For the Working Classes. "In France, haricot beans form a principal part in the staple articles of food for the working classes, and indeed for the entire population; it is much to be desired that some effectual means should be adopted for the purpose of introducing and encouraging the use of this most excellent vegetable among the people of England as a general article of daily food, more especially in the winter. If this desideratum could be accomplished, its beneficial result would go far to assist in rendering us in a measure independent of the potato crop, which, of late years, has proved so uncertain.

I am aware that haricot beans, as well as lentils, as at present imported and retailed as a mere luxury to such as possess cooks who know how to dress them, might lead to the rejection of my proposal that they should be adopted as food by the people; but I see no reason why haricot beans should not be imported to this country in such quantities as would enable the importers to retail them at a somewhat similar low price as that in which they are sold at in France." So, in 1852 haricot beans were generally seen as a snob and expensive imported item (and lentils, too!).But there is worse to come. Let us pass swiftly on to 1877, when Kettner's Book of the Table appeared, purporting to be from the pen of Mr Kettner of the restaurant of that name, but actually written by ES Dallas. Here is what the two of them had to say about beans:"Beans are more than beans, good for food and pleasant to the taste: they are a moral lesson. The priests of Egypt held it a crime even to look at beans - the very sight of them unclean.