Mr Juncker was in a such a state his officials feared that he would lose his composure completely. "Basically, they had to take him off into a small room and hose him down," a British source said.

As the briefing wars continued Mr Juncker, in a barbed aside, declared he would not be at the European Parliament on Thursday to hear Mr Blair's keynote speech to MEPs announcing the working programme for the forthcoming British presidency, on the spurious-sounding grounds that "it is Luxembourg's national day". Journalists applauded.