I do take the view that the job of press secretary becomes extremely difficult if the press secretary

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"I do take the view that the job of press secretary becomes extremely difficult if the press secretary, and not the department he serves, becomes the story and the subject of excessive attention," he said."It is absurd that, on the day the euro starts trading, in the week the Monetary Policy Committee is meeting and when the Chancellor is working on a number of important initiatives for the new year, that there is such attention focused on me."Mr Whelan said he would stand down as soon as he found another job, which is expected to be in the private sector.The Tories said he was a "lame duck" and should stand down immediately, but called on him to serve a period of "quarantine" before taking a private-sector job because he knows the secrets of Mr Brown's March Budget.Although Downing Street insisted there was no evidence that Mr Whelan leaked details of Mr Mandelson's loan, and paid tribute to his work, it revealed that Mr Campbell would have to approve his successor at the Treasury.Cabinet ministers hope that Mr Whelan's announcement will allow the Government to "get back to the basics" of concentrating on policy."Now is the time to draw a line under recent events," said David Blunkett, the Secretary of State for Education and Employment. As The Independent revealed on Saturday, several cabinet ministers were calling for his head, with some threatening to raise the issue in Cabinet next week.Alastair Campbell, Mr Blair's press secretary, is believed to have told the Prime Minister he would no longer work with Mr Whelan after Mr Mandelson's sudden departure just before Christmas.Mr Whelan said the level of media speculation about his role in the affair was making it impossible to carry out his job effectively. The minister added: "The euro is an instrument at the service of policy. It will restore to us a power that we had largely lost."Euro notes will not start circulating until 2002, but the launch of the euro will increase the pressure for an early referendum on Britain's entry, which is not due until after the next general election.Dealers in the City said the huge task of converting millions of bank deposits and trillions of dollars of assets from the old European currencies to euros had gone smoothly, enabling trading to start on time yesterday without a hitch.Winners and losers, Page 8Interest rates fear, Page 12Hamish McRae, Review, Page 5.

GORDON BROWN sacrificed his controversial press secretary yesterday as Tony Blair sought to stabilise his Government after two weeks of turmoil provoked by the Peter Mandelson affair. Charlie Whelan, one of the Chancellor's closest aides, announced he is to leave his job as the Treasury's press secretary despite strongly denying he leaked details of Mr Mandelson's pounds 373,000 personal loan from Geoffrey Robinson, the former paymaster-general. Downing Street denied that Mr Whelan had been forced out. But Mr Brown and Mr Blair are understood to have discussed his future by telephone last week during the Prime Minister's holiday in the Seychelles.It is believed they agreed that Mr Whelan would have to quit to enable the Government to draw a line under the Mandelson affair and prevent further damaging speculation about tension between the Prime Minister and his Chancellor.Government insiders suggested Mr Whelan decided to jump before he was pushed. In a radio interview in France, Mr Strauss-Kahn argued that Europe's 11- nation economic bloc will operate on equal status to the US, ensuring that it "will no longer be subjected to economic domination". Sterling by contrast had a poor day."Economic and monetary union (EMU) turns other western European economies from medium-sized players among equals into small entities on the fringe of a giant," said Holger Schmieding, an economist at Merrill Lynch, the Wall Street investment bank, "If need be, these outsiders will have to adjust to EMU, not vice versa."Nick Parsons, City economist at Paribas, a leading French bank, warned: "Sterling risks being marginalised, at a time when the UK economy is moving into recession."We think the euro will be the best performing currency this year as more and more people switch out of the dollar."Europe's political leaders hailed the first day of trading in the euro as a big success, with claims that the new currency will be strong enough to allow the Continent to escape "economic domination" by the United States.The French Finance Minister, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, led the chorus of approval, forecasting that the euro would become as important as the dollar.

If the euro works and the economic benefits are clear and unambiguous, we would recommend entry."He pledged that London would "be at the centre of the euro even though Britain is not part of the first wave".Trading on the first day showed that the euro had passed its first important test.On the foreign exchange markets, the euro rose nearly three-quarters of 1 per cent against the dollar. The euro rose sharply against the dollar and share prices on European stock markets registered big gains after a shaky start. London was virtually shunned by investors in what threatens to be a foretaste of life on the fringes of Europe's $10trn capital market - the largest in the world. A runaway success for the euro would make the momentum for Britain's entry unstoppable, and Mr Blair yesterday reinforced the impression that it was a case of "when" not "if" Britain would join.Both the Prime Minister and Eddie George, the Governor of the Bank of England, stressed that Britain's economy was at a different point in the cycle to the euro-countries, led by France and Germany, which have lowered interest rates to 3 per cent, but there were no constitutional obstacles to entry."It would not have been in Britain's national economic interest to do so at this stage," Mr Blair said in The Wall Street Journal "But our position is clear ... The London Symphony Chorus were their usual dependable selves, though the Tallis singers at Greenwich had nothing to fear by the comparison, least of all the men.. THE PRIME Minister raised expectations last night of British entry to the European single currency after financial markets around the world rushed to embrace the euro on the first day of trading. Carmen Oprisanu's seamless line was thoughtfully and affectingly shaped, Orlin Anastassov opened up the troubled character of Herod and made him almost sympathetic - after all, this version of the story has him forced into the killings by a focus group.