Then throughout the party's long spell out of power, the Thatcherite eurosceptic forces grew in strength until there was nothing left of the Heathite Tory Europhiles, Kenneth Clarke and a handful of others aside.

This was David Cameron's inheritance when he became leader in December 2005. His party had come to broadly accept the Thatcher analysis on Europe, although it was so scarred by the disunity of the mid-1990s, when the Tory establishment had struggled to compute that Thatcher Mark II had been right, that much of the party was wary of being defined solely by its views on Europe. This gave Cameron a good deal of room for manoeuvre.

In the leadership election he cultivated the image of a moderate eurosceptic who would avoid going on about the subject. The new Tory leader quietly withdrew the Conservatives from the European People's Party, a centre-Right federalist organisation, and attempted to set up an alternative European outfit for (mainly Central and Eastern European) sceptics. The ensuing criticism and difficulties seemed to shake Cameron. He had gone against his instincts, which have tended to dictate avoidance of confrontation or risk. Cameron is innately cautious, unless cornered and forced to be daring. Still, during the row over the Lisbon treaty in 2007 he promised a referendum and his shadow foreign secretary William Hague assured the party that even if the treaty had been ratified when the Tories came to office, they would not let matters rest there. The manifesto for the general election in 2010 talked of returning powers to Britain from Brussels.

As prime minister, however, he proceeded at first to prove the truth of Hannan's First Law (so named by the prominent Tory eurosceptic Dan Hannan MEP). This law stipulates that, however it may behave in opposition, no party is ever eurosceptic in office. In several areas, notably regulation of the City, Cameron and Osborne handed over powers to EU institutions with breathtaking insouciance. The compromises required by coalition were a complicating factor, of course. Nick Clegg is a former functionary in the Commission — a creature of Brussels, that is — and from the start Cameron was terrified of offending him for fear of precipitating the collapse of the coalition.

But the presence of Clegg as his deputy cannot, alone, explain Cameron's initially misguided approach to Europe. He tried to pick-up where Major left off. It is not widely appreciated how much Cameron listens to the last Tory incumbent at No 10. The former prime minister is consulted regularly, and is encouraged to act as an outrider when N0 10 wants to test an argument. Cameron has in turn copied Major's policy of trying to win concessions but then basically trundling along behind France and Germany. On Europe, Cameron was behaving like a Major man, when the vast bulk of his party is Thatcherite.