The Conservative cobra comes back to life

The Eurosceptics have won. In 1995, both the Chancellor, Kenneth Clarke, and the Deputy Prime Minister, Michael Heseltine, were in favour of continued integration and monetary union. Now no senior Tory would countenance anything less than considerable repatriation of powers. Clarke is a mere Minister without Portfolio, elderly and near retirement. There is nobody who comes close to replacing him. Now, the only question is when the calls for complete withdrawal become established as governing opinion. Or when the party itself disintegrates.

At the edge of this tempest stand the other big parties, frowning and scratching their chins. Torment over “Europe” has become an almost uniquely right-wing phenomenon. It makes no sense at all to the majority of Labour and Lib Dem MPs, who decided long ago that EU membership is generally a good thing.

Coalition politics makes the reappearance of the European cobra all the more bizarre. The Lib Dems are interested in getting on with running the country. This means concentrating on the stuff that is, in their eyes, actually important: sorting out the economy and public services. They, like Labour, will relish a repeat of the civil war that contributed substantially to the Tories’ slaughter in 1997 and 2001.

Cameron spent half a decade building up the Conservatives as a party that cared about the same things as the public. For the first three years of his premiership he was gifted a diabolical economic situation, and could force his party to concentrate on that. But as we used to say back in 2010, the economy has improved. He now lacks anything to distract his unwieldy legion. And they are dedicated. Within hours of the Eurosceptic amendment to the Queen’s Speech being roundly hammered in the House of Commons, dozens of MPs had agreed to launch a co-ordinated effort to put through a withdrawal bill anyway.

The Conservatives are obsessed with particular issues to the exclusion of others, and to an extent that goes beyond their actual impact on public life. George Osborne has become totally fixated on deficit reduction. It is remarkable quite how much the right of the Conservative party has become obsessed with equal marriage. Europe is similarly, and inexplicably, the parent of immense discord, whereas issues like giving power up to the UN, the United States or devolved administrations have raised barely a murmur of complaint in recent years. The EU may have immense power over Britain’s agricultural policy, but (to take one example) the US has had enormous influence over foreign policy.

The obsession with Europe is miserable news for the Prime Minister as he tries to keep his party in order for the 2015 general election. It’s also embarrassing. The Lib Dems are supposed to be incapable of being the party of government, yet Cameron is rather like a mother trying to keep control of her unruly children in a public park. Like all demanding toddlers, the Conservative right has total control of its ostensible superiors.

The result is a desperate loss of political capital in the eyes of his coalition partners. Some suggestions by Conservatives make coalition government even more difficult. Nadine Dorries’ announcement that she hopes to stand as a joint Conservative/UKIP candidate or Jacob Rees-Mogg’s proposal that Nigel Farage be made Deputy Prime Minister do not help Cameron persuade his coalition partners of his party’s willingness to work with them.

Much more importantly for the long-term survival of the Conservatives, Cameron has no way of appeasing his rebellious colleagues. So essential is Europe in the eyes of the right that nothing he can do will sate its desire for total withdrawal. At this rate, he might even prefer to lose the general election. Worrying about Europe would then become the next leader’s problem. And the next leader’s and the next…