AT THE Conservative Party conference this week, William Hague, the shadow foreign secretary, fired the starting gun on the next big challenge for David Cameron: the European elections.
Polling day is not until June, but it will be the biggest UK-wide test to date for Mr Cameron and Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister. It will be taken as a key indicator of the likely result in the next general election.
But the Tory MEPs who will
go into battle on Mr Cameron's behalf are not a happy bunch. Already forced to sign up to new rules on expenses, they are now under orders to withdraw from the centre-right coalition that dominates business in the European Parliament.
This was a promise Mr Cameron made to his Eurosceptic Westminster party when he was fighting David Davis for the party leadership. But insiders warn that it threatens to reopen the fault lines on Europe within the Tory party at large and could also undermine Mr Cameron's hopes, should he become prime minister, of a fruitful working relationship with Nicolas Sarkozy, the president of France, Angela Merkel, the chancellor of Germany, and Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian prime minister.
Under European Parliament rules, MEPs have to join a group to gain rights and influence. The current threshold is 20 MEPs from at least six member states. After June, it increases to 25 MEPs from seven EU countries. The Tories have 26 MEPs at present and hope to gain around 40 of the 72 UK seats up for grabs. But they will struggle to form a new group with MEPs from six other nations. The Czech democrats are already signed up, and they may also be able to count on the support of the Italian Pensioners' Party.
But there is a concern that few other countries will be ready to join the Tories – leaving its MEPs post-June having to sit in a ramshackle gathering of political outcasts currently featuring Robert Kilroy-Silk and the French fascist Jean-Marie Le Pen and his daughter, Marine.
Mr Cameron is accused of failing to comprehend how Europe works – and now risks a split within Tory ranks at Brussels. Around six of his MEPs have made clear that they will not be prepared to sit with the unaligned MEPs from elsewhere in Europe.
