SO the great beef war is over. Last week will go down not only as the time when England regained some of its pride on the football field, but as the date when the heads of the governments of Western European solemnly discussed culling cows, and came up with the Compromise of Florence.
The agreement reached at the weekend ends three months of diplomatic warfare during which London had obstructed more than 80 pieces of European Union legislation in retaliation for the banning of its beef exports. It commits Britain to tougher measures to eradicate Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy - 'mad cow disease' - from its herds, notably by killing up to 67,000 cattle in addition to the 80,000 already marked for destruction.
Britain will also halt the use of meat and bone-meal in animal feed. In return for which, mainland European countries agreed to a phased lifting of their ban on British beef, but without setting out any timetable. Britain will also probably be free to sell its beef outside Europe to any countries which want it. Mr Major naturally hailed the deal, but it is open to question how much he really achieved beyond defusing Britain's most explosive row with its partners since the era when Margaret Thatcher battled to get a better deal for Britain in Europe.
The Foreign Secretary may express his delight with the outcome, but the great patriotic campaign launched by his Prime Minister has ended, as the Daily Mail put it yesterday, 'not with a bang, but a whimper'.
What makes matters all the more desperate for the Prime Minister is that the depth of the crisis was of Britain's making - from the hysterical tone of the tabloid press to those ridiculous days when, pursuing its policy of non-co-operation, Britain both sabotaged measures to grant aid to poor countries and stopped moves to reduce bureaucratic red tape.
As so often in dealing with Europe, Britain's policy was dictated by the internal splits in the Conservative Party: to preserve his precarious position in parliament, Mr Major has, in effect, handed over the reins to the Eurosceptics. Not daring to stand up to them, he allows himself to be seduced into seemingly tough posturing which only leaves him looking all the weaker when the inevitable climb-down follows, as it did at the Florence summit. His lack of resolution is all the more striking when contrasted with the much more straightforward position on Europe set out by his likely successor in Downing Street, Tony Blair, on a visit to Germany last week during which he pitched Labour's tent much closer to the continental partners than any Tory would dare to do.