Once again it's all go in the European Parliament. While Labour MEPs have been working hard to get the Europe-wide laws we need on issues like airline discrimination, recycling and animal welfare, the Tories have been. well, squabbling among themselves, of course. And interestingly, their current squabbles reveal as much about the Conservative party of the future as they do about the personality clashes in the party today.
You see, Tory MEPs currently sit as part of the main centre-right grouping in the European Parliament, called the European People's Party (EPP). It includes all the mainstream centre-right parties, be they enthusiastic europhiles like the German CDU or anti-federalists like the French Gaullists and Scandinavian Conservatives.
The EPP is the largest group in Parliament. As part of it, the Tories can punch above their weight in Brussels: they get powerful committee positions and even have a vice-president of Parliament. Plus, they get the chance to shape the policy of the whole of the EPP, magnifying their influence considerably.
Of course, most Tory MEPs are happy with this position, and so they should. But there's a noisy fringe band of eurosceptics nicknamed the H-block (Hannan, Heaton-Harris and Helmer) whose demands for the Tories to leave the mainstream have been getting louder and louder. These eurosceptics have an agenda of their own which goes against the grain even in their own party - like UKIP, they think the UK should withdraw from the EU altogether. This extreme position is regarded as pretty barking by most of their colleagues, even moderate eurosceptics.
Anyway, there have been rumours for a while that the Tories wouldn't last long in the mainstream EPP, but nothing has ever come of them until David Cameron came along. Cameron did a deal with the eurosceptic wing of his party back home: 'vote for me and I'll pull our MEPs out of the EPP'. As it happens, this was the only concrete pledge he made in the entire woolly campaign, so his attempts to wriggle out of it thus far have failed.
His most recent move has been to send Hague over to Brussels to 'examine the options'. But Hague has stepped into a minefield. By far the majority of the MEPs don't want to leave - they know that inside the EPP they have power and influence, while outside they will be on the fringes. In fact, on the same day that Cameron was elected on a 'pull-out' ticket, the Tory MEPs re-elected their own leader, Tim Kirkhope, on a ' stay-in ' ticket!
No doubt some of them will give in if Cameron decides to call their bluff, but others have made it quite clear just what they think of their new leader's sop to the eurosceptic right. First, there's the problem that staying in the EPP was actually part of their 2004 manifesto - proving that even Tories will take note of a manifesto promise when it suits them:
"Simply by following our manifesto commitment, the party is now telling us we are de-selecting ourselves. This is driven by an extreme minority group within the Conservative delegation who are more interested in leaving Europe than leaving the EPP." (Edward McMillan Scott MEP)
Second, there's the slight problem of exactly where the Tories are supposed to go once they leave the mainstream:
"Working with the EPP we can win crucial votes. We will be a lot less use to those we represent, lined up only with assorted Estonian Rightists and Slovenian Woolgathers. Oddly, he seems not to understand. God knows who his alternative allies are. Aides are said to be shaking the hedges of Eastern Europe: so far the only possibilities may be Polish and Czech peasant nationalists, three eccentric Swedes, a French protectionist Eurosceptic, and two MEPs from the Netherlands' extreme Christian party, which wants to stop Sunday bicycle riding. Mr Cameron has vowed to work with the government in the British national interest. How can he do so as part of this barmy army?" (Caroline Jackson MEP)
(Actually, Caroline forgets to mention that the Tories are rumoured to have approached the Alleanza Nazionale, the party which emerged from the neo-fascist fringe of Italy - only to be snubbed because the Italians judged them to be "too right-wing"!)
And last but not least, there's the slight hitch that the MEPs are simply refusing to go:
"We would have to sit around the table on a weekly basis with these fascists and nutters that nobody else will sit with. I tell you now that I refuse to do that. I don't care who's ordering me to do that. I won't come back and stand for election as a Conservative in Scotland when I'm sitting in a group with Le Pen." (Struan Stevenson MEP)
"If ordered to leave the EPP-ED, which I was recommended to join by Margaret Thatcher and Chancellor Kohl, I shall ignore any such instruction, which would be in breach of Parliament's rules on the independence of elected members." (Christopher Beazley MEP)
"Whatever happens I intend staying with the EPP to keep the place warm for my party when it returns to its senses." (Caroline Jackson MEP again)
What is emerging from this mess is not just Tory divisions (always good fun to watch), but serious confirmation that Cameron's apparent moderation of some domestic policy positions in fact masks a radical lurch to the right in other areas.