When Tony Blair replaced the Downing Street telephone after a last call to Nissan boss Carlos Ghosn 10 days ago he was relieved.
It was exactly one week before Nissan would make the crucial announcement that it was to build the next Micra car at Sunderland rather than at a Renault factory near Paris, guaranteeing the future of the British plant.
The Peter Mandelson storm had yet to break and the Prime Minister must have anticipated a week of jubilant headlines. No overt promises had been made in London, and no definitive nod given from Tokyo. But Blair knew that, bar actually joining the euro, he had done as much as any politician could to persuade an industrialist that Britain was the right place for investment. The balance was tipping rapidly in his favour.
And Ghosn knew that the mood music in the Government was sufficiently europhile to convince him Blair would urge membership of the single currency sooner rather than later after the next election.
A final call from Tokyo at the beginning of last week gave the Japanese firm's Sunderland plant the thumbs-up, though Blair was asked to keep it to himself until Ghosn arrived in person.
With the fragile euro strengthening all the time and Nissan's UK workforce promising to squeeze costs until the pips squeaked, Ghosn had heard enough.
His senior executives did the final number crunching and, crucially, decided that in future 65 per cent of the cost of making the Micra and, eventually, all Nissans assembled here, will be in euros.
That means either sourcing most of its components on the Continent or paying UK suppliers, whose costs are in pounds, in euros.
It is a hedge that will protect the Nissan cost base in Britain until - the firm now assumes - this country joins the eurozone. Nissan is determined to reverse last year's £150 million loss on its European operations by the end of next year.
There were rumours that the good news was to be announced last Wednesday, but this was postponed until the following day because Blair had to meet Mandelson and accept his resignation. The change was swiftly denied by Nissan, and by Whitehall sources, who said it was always going to be Thursday.
It was that kind of week. Endless speculation that Blair did a deal with Ghosn on the euro was met with endless denials from the company and the Government.
What is known is that at a whirlwind meeting between trade secretary Stephen Byers and Ghosn in Tokyo on Friday 12 January, the car chief told the minister that if the Government had ruled out euro membership for the duration of the next Parliament, the new Micra would have gone to France.
Ghosn, the Renault man heading Nissan in a tie-up between the two firms, has studied recent opinion polls, and is satisfied that Labour will win a second term.
Byers flew to Tokyo from New Delhi, where he had been on a trade mission. He travelled to the shabby Nissan headquarters after a sleepless night, and was offered nothing to eat or drink by the hard-nosed Ghosn.
Four hours after landing, Byers was back on the plane and returning to the UK - without a promise, but full of optimism.
The Industry Secretary had been able to tell Ghosn he had sufficient inside information to be confident that the European Commission would approve the £41 million Government grant to Nissan the following Wednesday.
On the same day Labour MP Fraser Kemp, whose Houghton and Washington East constituency surrounds the Nissan plant, was in Brussels putting the finishing touches to six months of intensive lobbying by himself and DTI officials that had helped push through the grant in record time.
Finally, last Thursday, Ghosn flew in to Britain to announce the glad tidings and posed for pictures with Blair outside Number 10. He hosted a press conference with a relieved Byers and Sunderland plant boss John Cushnaghan before heading off to the World Economic Forum in the Swiss resort of Davos.
On Friday, Blair was cheered on to the shopfloor by the Sunderland plant's 5,000 workers and given a plaque in the works canteen.
Had the decision gone against them it would have been hard to envisage Blair going anywhere near the area for fear of being hit with something worse than an overripe tomato.
Already the most productive car plant in Europe - beating the French plant at Flins by 25 cars per employee per year - Sunderland had promised further economies totalling 30 per cent of costs, with round-the-clock working in order to win the next Micra.
The workers had done their bit, and Blair, Byers and their civil servants were determined to match it - this time. They were determined this would not be another Rover.
BMW's decision to dump its 'English patient' last spring took the Government by surprise, despite what industry insiders say were numerous warnings that Rover was in financial meltdown.
But, anticipating the worst, Byers already had in place the dreaded 'taskforce' set to go about finding sacked workers new jobs if the Nissan decision went against the UK. The equivalent body for Rover staff had been set up in extreme haste only after that firm's bombshell news. The Sunderland taskforce can how happily stand down.
Blair, with Byers and Cushnaghan, first met Nissan president Ghosn at Number 10 last July. Ghosn gave Blair confidential data on how much he was losing on Sunderland-made cars because of the yawning gap between the pound and the euro - exacerbated, he believed, by Labour's equivocation over when, or whether, the UK should join the eurozone.
Blair realised he could not risk assuming that the threat to move the Micra to France was empty politicking.
He asked how he could help, and said he would do everything he could to ensure the firm received a Government grant.
There followed months of increasing pessimism as the euro weakened and Ghosn made depressingly regular speeches claiming it was impossible to make cars profitably in the UK while it remained outside the euro.
Cushnaghan told The Observer this weekend that he felt most gloomy last November when the euro dived spectacularly to below $1.
Even now his plant has won this vital contract, he says: 'We have concern over the continuing relationship between the pound and the euro. As exporters it is causing us considerable difficulties. It's a big, big problem.'
But he says Nissan is confident that joining the euro is a 'live issue' on the Government's post-election agenda.
Blair invited Cushnaghan to his house in his Sedgefield constituency just before Christmas to chew over the issues again and impress on Nissan how important the decision was for the North East. Again, the prime minister asked if there was any more he could do to help? All of which contrasts sharply with the inactivity of France's leaders.
Despite some union grumbles, the Renault plant in Flins, is equally capable of producing the Micra and is sitting pretty in the eurozone. But there was no telephoning by French leaders Lionel Jospin, Jacques Chirac or other ministers to woo Nissan.
Even without an overt promise on the euro, Blair's actions must have spoken volumes to Ghosn. And, of course, he knows that if he is let down on this issue, it is perfectly within the bounds of manufacturing capability to unclip the Micra production line and ship it across the Channel in 2003.
