The EU campaign has begun – and Tory wars are back

Liam Fox’s new year party at the Carlton Club has become the traditional start to the Tory Party’s year. This year there were 11 Cabinet members including the Chancellor, Home Secretary, Defence Secretary, Business Secretary and Boris Johnson. I’d say that most of the Tory MPs there are ‘leavers’, who have this week been given permission to campaign freely against a ‘remain’ campaign expected to be led by the Prime Minister.  So in this way, the old Tory wars are about to start again. I look at this in my Daily Telegraph column today.

This is not Eurosceptic vs Europhile. This will be a battle between Eurosceptics: the ones who think the EU can be beaten back from within, and the ones who want out altogether. But it won’t be long before this division is superimposed upon old ones: the modernisers vs the traditionalists, pragmatists vs the idealists, the wets vs dries.