He also talked about sending teachers to the unit in order to

He also talked about sending teachers to the unit in order to improve their skills in dealing with disruptive behaviour. Extra staff in schools can help, too, so that these youngsters can receive the attention that they so clearly need.These measures would not, of course, solve the problem - this week's conference heard about a five-year-old who put his personal minder in hospital by hitting him in the eye with his shoe - but they would ease the pressure. And maybe they would help to stem the flow of holiday-season scare stories about the scourge of our out-of-control youth.. From the outside, the Cabinet argument about a single currency plebiscite has seemed a little loopy. Any such referendum is far off and, under the Tories, most unlikely. For Kenneth Clarke to get so irate now about something that probably won't happen in 2001 has laid him open to the charge of belligerence beyond reason.

Yet he was right to fight, and it matters to Britain that he lost. For despite the outbreak of determined grinning all round, that's what has happened In the end, Kenneth Clarke blinked and John Major won. As I reported here last month, the Chancellor had, emotionally as well as intellectually, been prepared to resign in order to halt the anti-Brussels ratchet. Yet the so-called concessions he has won are not important - cosmetic face-savers, not substance.

They emphasise his weakness, not his strength. Take the Prime Minister's promise that collective responsibility would be imposed on Tory ministers during a single currency referendum. Euro- sceptics don't take this seriously and they are right not to. So many Conservatives are utterly opposed to giving up the pound that imposing collective responsibility would destroy by resignation any Tory administration remotely similar to this one.So collective responsibility means two things. First (and this is a plus for Clarke), such a referendum won't happen under today's Tory party.

But second (and this matters more) it only won't happen because the Tories will not take Britain into a single currency. They cannot.This may have been the underlying reality before but the referendum episode has made it explicit. Tony Blair's jibe about the Chancellor's "paralysis" in the Commons on Tuesday (Clarke could neither nod assent nor shake his head when challenged) is a fair description of the Conservatives' remaining room for manoeuvre on the matter.As the Chancellor realised long ago, this effectively means that, for the time being, the anti-single currency Tories have won. Since it requires political movement to achieve a new currency, and since the Conservatives cannot move, the pound is safe with them. (Indeed, now that the single currency has been named the euro, we can rename the factions, and declare that the Sterling Tories have beaten the Euro Tories.)This is unlikely to be a mere holding position, up for revision if the Tories win the election, as Clarke's supporters would like to think.