Are the Tories now planning a staged and inelegant climbdown over Lisbon?

Danny Finklestein lays out what Dave is likely to do over Lisbon. And he doesn’t think, if William Hague is formulating the party’s response to Ireland’s emphatic yes to Lisbon, that Lisbon will figure until the changes have been made (and it looks like the much hoped for resistance from his political ally and Polish president Lech Kaczy´nski is collapsing) we will hear anything much about it in Manchester this week:

Once bits of the Lisbon treaty have been implemented, it will be much easier to win the debate about accepting it as a reality (albeit an annoying one) and moving on. And I bet that is what they decide to do.

I’ve worked with William Hague on the Europe issue and I think I understand how he thinks. He moves when he has to and can shift straight to a new robust position. He doesn’t want a continually updated discussion. But if this is the view they take, they cannot object to the media noting that they have been required to put party management ahead of a clear Prime Ministerial course of action.

As Conall notes even the Czech President has just kicked David Cameron’s last viable eurosceptic stick away

Of course foreign policy has never been a priority for Cameron, but by prioritising the management of his party’s internal conflicts over Europe – note the impetuous promise during his party’s leadership campaign to leave the EPP – may indicate that whilst Cameron has nerve aplenty, his longer term problem may lie the quality of his judgement.

After all, as Ireland has discovered to its cost, it is no longer the case that a country can deal with any single great issue on the purely domestic plane…

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