Europe looms its head to threaten the coalition and the Tories

The Telegraph’s splash on Europe indicates that the issue, which proved so toxic to the last Conservative government, has risen again. Writing a stern op-ed for the paper, serial rebel and anti-Cameroon Mark Pritchard calls for a referendum.

This will have irritated Downing Street no end, which is understood to have hoped that the whip-sanctioned Eurosceptic grouping that has formed around George Eustice might have contained the party’s factious elements. But some disgruntled MPs on the right privately say that last week’s well attended meeting of Eustice’s group turned into something of a disappointment. The insistence that an exit from the EU was off-limits for the moment was apparently met by a singular lack of enthusiasm in some quarters.

This and Pritchard’s article suggests that Cameron may have released some effervescent mischief, which is likely to intensify if the government encourages talk about Europe to distract from the economy. Such a strategy is also likely to destabilise the coalition. Writing in today’s Times (£), Danny Alexander laid out the Liberal Democrat view that now is not the time to loosen our ties with Europe. Instead we should be going deeper into the single market as a matter of economic necessity. Lib Dem Foreign Office minister Jeremy Browne reiterated those sentiments at the party conference earlier today.