At the beginning of the month it was conveniently revealed, on the wink and the nod, that Mr Steve Hilton, the Director of Strategy in Downing Street, and Oliver Letwin MP were privately in favour of EU withdrawal. Yet, as I noted in the case of John Redwood, until individuals make their alleged privately held views public, such speculation is not worth a cursory glance.

This morning it was the turn of the Daily Mail to play willing fool as it dutifully repeated a leak claiming Steve Hilton had suggested:

…the Government should abolish maternity leave and scrap all consumer rights laws to help kick start the economy. [He] also suggested that the Prime Minister should abolish all job centres and ignore all European labour rules.

This afternoon we had Tim Montgomerie recounting the thoughts of the great sage and former MP, Paul Goodman who once described Steve Hilton as ‘Edmund Burke beamed into contemporary San Francisco’. It must be that Mr Goodman was referring to another Edmund Burke, rather than the Whig MP who proved so prophetic in his Reflections on the Revolution in France, because as far as I can determine then there is little in the way of similarity between him and Hilton. To compare the two as equal is to do the memory of the father of conservatism a great dishonour.

If, as David Breaker recently wrote, Steve Hilton is ‘a traditionalist in disguise,’ then I’ll be the first to say that it is an incredibly good one. Hilton had me completely fooled. I, along with many others, honestly thought that he was just another liberal social democrat purporting to be a ‘conservative’. How silly of me.

I recant. Now I see Mr Hilton’s vision of the ‘Big Society’, his pursuit of an ethnicity-based candidate selection process for the Tories, and push to waste more money on the NHS as intrinsically conservative in nature. Truly he is the heir to Edmund Burke!

On a slightly more serious note, all these faux leaks tend to have one real aim, which is to deceive conservative-inclined members of the electorate into voting for the Conservative party. Once again, as Helen Szamuely highlighted, there is a common theme in all this:

…the presentation of the Conservative Party as the one and only truly eurosceptic political organization in this country, for which all ‘true’ eurosceptics should vote.

Much is suggested, without any supporting evidence, that a Conservative Government shod of its Lib Dim partners would be more conservative in its policies and approach. Yet, it is a false hope. A majority Conservative administration would differ little in its policies from the Coalition or indeed New Labour.

With ‘traditionalists’ like David Cameron and Steve Hilton at the helm, who move so freely between the metropolitan classes and the liberal elite, then the Conservative party are run by a group where conservativism is viewed as repellent and the leftist creeds of climate change, equality and diversity are worshiped. This is why Cameron and Hilton are as they are, and shall remain forever so.

The decision to shed these workers was made after the Government awarded a lucrative contract to German company, Siemens, for the construction of 1,200 new carriages for the £6bn upgrade to the Thameslink route.

The Railway’s Minister, Theresa Villiers, said the bid by Siemens, which will build the new carriages in Germany, represented the “best value for money for taxpayers” and stressed that the contract would create up to 2,000 new British jobs.

This is particularly interesting in light of the comments Ms Villiers made when in opposition during the previous Parliament. Well, I say ‘opposition’, but then there never was very much actual opposing of the Brown Government’s policies by the Conservatives. Indeed, sometimes I wonder whether we even had a change of Government at all. Most of the guff the Government spouts these days could just as easily have been announced by a Labour Minister.

Richard North drills home the duplicity of Government Ministers who say one thing in ‘opposition’ and another in Government:

How very different this was two years ago when our Theresa was outraged by the government’s decision to award a £7.5 billion contract to replace ageing high-speed trains on the Great Western and East Coast main lines.

Bombardier also lost out on that one, that time to a consortium led by the Japanese firm Hitachi, called Agility Trains, which included John Laing and Barclays Bank.

Then as now, the government said the contract would “create and safeguard” UK jobs, claiming 12,500 would benefit. But the then Shadow Transport Minister, who just happened to be Theresa Villiers, dismissed this as “typical spin” from the Government.

“This announcement raises further questions about Gordon Brown’s claims about British jobs for British workers. Geoff Hoon needs to stop the spin and tell the UK’s hard pressed train manufacturing industry the real truth about his decision on replacing intercity trains,” she stormed.

Then, however, the fair Villiers did not have to confront the “real truth” – the realities of the EU’s procurement directives, which prevent British firms being favoured, even if it is more economic in the longer term.

Gosh, now that was a surprise, wasn’t it? As we’ve learnt by now, at the heart of almost every political problem in this country lies the European Union. Such is the degree to which our sovereignty has been diminished that our own Government is incapable of deciding which companies may be awarded state contracts.

This point was backed up by Roger Helmer MEP in his latest email newsletter, who recounts a meeting he recently had with Ms Villiers:

Emma McClarkin raised the important and vexed issue of the rolling stock order that went to Siemens in Germany, not to Bombardier in Derby… Theresa well understood the concern, and the local anger in Derby, but said that the Government after much thought and careful analysis had come to the conclusion that under EU procurement rules, they had no option but to choose Siemens. This leaves outstanding the question why similar French and German orders always seem to go to national suppliers.

The British economy finds itself in a complete mess at the moment, and is slowly sinking into the fiscal abyss along with Greece, Spain, Portugal and the like. The addition of a further 1,400 people to the employment queue is hardly a promising sign of things to come. Tell me again, why are we still a member of the European Union?

In light of the recent media speculation, John Gill on the Freedom Association’s website asks whether the Conservative party have rediscovered euroscepticism? He says:

The Daily Express refers to these revelations as a ‘surge in anti-Brussels feeling within the Government’; and, whilst I have my reservations as to how accurate these reports are, it is encouraging nonetheless that even arch Cameroons, such as Letwin and Hilton, are beginning to see just how damaging an institution the EU is.

Whilst I won’t hold my breath that this will happen any time soon, I am confident that sooner, rather than later, the Tories will have to rediscover euroscepticism to stand any chance of keeping up with public opinion.

While John says he won’t hold his breath at this happening, even to believe that it could happen is of course wishful thinking. In fact it is so wishful as to be almost pure fantasy, since you cannot rediscover something if you had never discovered it in the first place – the Tories never having been a ‘eurosceptic’ or anti-EU party.

Eurosceptic as a definition is pretty much meaningless these days, which could best be summed up as ‘supports the EU but pretends not to’. We’ve had three decades to gaze upon the workings of the European Union and to understand it for what it really is. This is very much a black and white issue. You either do not agree with the European Project and wish to leave it, or you support it and wish to remain within it. There is no in-between, wishy-washy, middle ground. The EU cannot be reformed or changing from within, in part because there is no overall will to do so from the majority of pro-EU member states and even if there were then no mechanisms to bring about such ‘reform’ exist. Therefore ‘euroscepticism’ is a ploy to dupe the gullible into voting for so called ‘eurosceptics’ who are politicians who support the EU because they do not wish to leave.

Further to John’s point, I am not sure I view this supposed ‘surge’ of ‘anti-Brussels feeling’ as an encouraging trend at all. The Tories likely intend to absorb the supposedly ‘eurosceptic vote’ (again, whatever you define that as) and then continue to do nothing about the EU – therefore back to good old business as usual.

It all seems just a little too convenient doesn’t it? It’s all rather wink and nod. Vague hints with nothing officially announced. All is done through smoke and mirrors, speculation by journalists (particularly pro-Government journalists), with nothing substantial or concrete.

As Richard North noted only a few weeks ago, Steve Hilton must be utterly useless as a political adviser to have only just noticed the vast transfer of powers the UK has passed to the EU. Still, this is after all the same man who encouraged Dave to hug-a-hoodie, and who purportedly voted for the Green party at the General Election in 1997. Yet, having said that, Steve Hilton and the Tory advisers are not entirely stupid either. As Helen Szamuely highlighted, there is a common theme in all this:

…the presentation of the Conservative Party as the one and only truly eurosceptic political organization in this country, for which all ‘true’ eurosceptics should vote.

Perhaps the Coalition is not as harmonious as we thought, and that an early election could be likely? Who knows? Or maybe Dave and co have finally realised that the plan to woo Lib Dim voters has spectacularly failed (though one would have thought the General Election would have been proof of that). Whatever the reason, the briefings that have led to this latest round of speculation will have been with votes rather than the voters in mind.

In all likelihood therefore, this is a plan devised by Tories to create the illusion of Conservative opposition to the EU where none in fact exists. David Cameron has spoken on many occasions of his support for the EU and his desire to prevent the British people having a referendum on membership in case we voted to leave. Month after month the EU’s Directives are passed through our Parliament on the nod without as much as a squeak of opposition. And now, suddenly, as if out of the blue, Government ministers think we should leave the EU, without a train of reasoned thought or analysis. Honestly, do they really believe we are all so gullible? Clearly so.

Lord Tebbit called for the electorate to withdraw their votes from the three main political parties at the European elections in June in order to send a message to those parties that their votes should not be taken for granted. He wrote:

Local elections, the great British public should treat just as normal but at the European elections, in my judgment they should send a very sharp message to the leaders of the three national parties by not voting for any of the national party candidates.

He went on to add in later interviews that the electorate should steer clear of voting for the socialist and racialist BNP, but other than that he did not mind who people voted for (or not at all), just that they didn’t vote Lib Dem, Labour or Conservative.

Even less than a decade ago this story would have caused a media storm. There would have been multiple front page news headlines detailing ‘furious’ Conservative splits over ‘Europe’ and the culturally leftist BBC would have had a field day.

Things though have since moved on. The Conservatives are still irrevocably split over the European Union, but the official media and political narrative has changed. Today’s official line is David Cameron good; Gordon Brown bad. In order to facilitate a change of Government, or rather Westminster administration, the media, having failed to make David Cameron popular, are now trying the other option which is to make Gordon Brown unpopular.

Therefore, any stories that might portray Cameron in a negative light are now willingly suppressed by the media. How else could one account for the complete lack of coverage over Lord Tebbit’s intervention, especially by the BBC, and the establishment papers of the Times and the Guardian?

It is not as though Lord Tebbit is a minor party figure either. As a former Chairman of the Conservative party and self appointed keeper of the Thatcherite flame, his comments carry weight within many circles and thus there is even more reason, one would have thought, for a fuss to be made about his public dissent.

During a press conference, David Cameron was asked about the action he would take over Lord Tebbit’s intervention. He said:

As a former party chairman, he should know a thing or two about party discipline and he should probably know a thing or two about the rules about supporting other parties. He was treading a very careful path and I would warn him, if he slips off that path he’s sitting as an independent.

Yet, as Cameron and his Conservative leadership well know, the party need Lord Tebbit more than they are prepared to publicly admit. Their pursuit of office lies in the knowledge that their core conservative vote must come out at the election and send them into office. If the party were to publicly ditch Lord Tebbit then this may act as a sudden wakeup call to tribal Conservative voters that perhaps their party is not quite what it may seem.

This obvious reluctance is why so much ambiguity surrounds the issue and why the party leadership will not, if they can help it, be pinned down on the matter.

In late 2007 it became clear that Gordon Brown was readying the Labour party for a snap election. At the Conservative conference in Bournemouth there was an atmosphere of worriment and discontent. Opinion polls were consistently showing that the Conservatives were many points behind Labour when they needed to be quite a few points in front, and that as a result they were likely to lose any coming General Election.

Defeat would have condemned the Conservatives to another five years on the opposition benches and made it an unprecedented fourth election defeat in a row for a political party who were once considered the ‘natural party of government’ in Britain.

At that time the Cameron project was still very much a work in progress. In many ways it still is. However, before the party conference in 2007, David Cameron had seen little success in actually attracting the wider electorate to vote Tory. Despite all the hoodie-hugging speeches (okay, so he never actually said that) and pledges that marriage could, in his view, be between a man and a woman, a man and man, and a woman and a woman – the electorate were still not all that interested.

The liberal metropolitan elite whom the Cameron project had initially targeted with such vigour had merely shrugged their shoulders and continued supporting Labour or the Liberal Democrats. They no longer really hated the Conservatives under Dave (because the Conservatives no longer stood for conservatism), but this certainly didn’t mean they were going to vote for them either.

Meanwhile, those who were once considered to be the socially conservative ‘working class’ and who are now affected by the grinding drudgery of crime and increasing moral poverty were none too impressed that the Conservatives would try, like the Left, to ‘understand’ crime as if it were some sort of social disease, rather than treat it as what it actually is – an unpleasant measure taken by the greedy and selfish.

Therefore the Conservative party was not increasing its electoral base and the party’s independent polling was showing that what was considered to be the core Conservative vote were certainly not enthused by Mr Cameron’s socially liberal, ambiguously high tax, big-state approach to a future Conservative Government.

With Gordon Brown having just become Prime Minister in June of that year and gained a resulting polling bounce, the Conservatives were quickly learning that just because millions of voters had voted Conservative in the past didn’t mean they would do so again – especially if they were not given any incentive. In addition the party were not picking up many votes from electoral dissatisfaction with the Labour Government.

With defeat staring Cameron and his leadership team in the face, and in a desperate attempt to limit their election loses, he and his advisers rushed to introduce a policy at conference that they thought would prove popular with their core vote.

As predicted, the new policy on inheritance tax was popular with many Conservative voters. However, as it happened, after more than a decade of repressive levels of taxation under Labour, many non-Conservatives voters were also fed up with seemingly ever higher tax bills and they grabbed onto this policy fig leaf of raising the inheritance tax threshold in the hope that a Conservative Government would provide more tax relief.

It would be fair to say that that one policy saved David Cameron’s bacon and that as a consequence of the swell in support for the Conservatives in opinion polling, Gordon Brown called off the election that he had been planning to hold.

One might have thought that would be the end of it all. The pledge to raise the inheritance tax threshold had been made, and this would be carried out if the Conservatives managed to form a Government at the next election. Unfortunately this does not seem to be the case and David Cameron, with the help and support of Ken Clarke and his Shadow Cabinet, is trying to wriggle out of that seemingly solid commitment.

David Cameron and the Conservative party are now in a wholly different position. They are consistently ahead, by some distance, in the opinion polls (though I really can’t see them winning a General Election by the margins predicted) and as time has gone by Gordon Brown has become an increasingly unpopular Prime Minister. Furthermore, the economy is disappearing ever further into recession and millions of people find themselves out of work, often with very little prospect of employment in the short term.

The upper echelons of the Conservative party therefore feel that they can renege on the inheritance tax pledge which they had never wanted to give in the first place. They know from their independent polling that there will be a large anti Labour Government vote at the next election, and they believe that their core vote will be enthused enough by the prospect of removing Labour from office that they will come out and vote Conservative regardless of what policies the party are actually advocating.

On this basis they also know that they do not need to make any further concessions to actual conservatively inclined voters, and that they can now rather conveniently change the terms of their pledge on inheritance tax knowing all too well that the party will not electorally suffer for doing so in the polls.

David Cameron and those who currently control the Conservative party are not ideological. They are perfectly happy to copy New Labour’s taxation and spending habits (or be completely ambiguous and not have a policy at all) because they don’t have any plans or ideas of their own. Come the next election, if the Conservatives somehow manage to win a majority of seats in the Commons then there will be a change of faces but without a change of policies. These days in Britain, whoever you vote for, the Government always gets in.

Bristol North West is among the most marginal constituencies in the country. It is seventeenth on the Conservatives’ list of target seats, and due to boundary changes the Labour candidate, who is not the incumbent MP, only has a provisional majority of approximately a thousand votes.

During the ‘Blast Day’, a group of sixty or so Conservatives managed to deliver close to thirty thousand of these magazines, which was very impressive. Those in attendance included Chris Skidmore, the Conservative candidate in the nearby constituency of Kingswood, and Nick Webb who was formerly the Chairman of Bristol and Gloucester Conservative Future.

I was also actually rather impressed by was the quality of the ‘Bristol Living’ magazine we were posting through people’s letter boxes. In the past the Conservative party has perhaps been guilty of presentational neglect in its leaflets. Talking down to the electorate is never a good idea, and obvious party political literature tends to go straight in the bin without being read.

Bristol Living is a variation of a similarly-styled magazine which the Conservative party is delivering across the country. The difference between these new magazine leaflets and older-style black and white literature is that they are in a format that people are used to reading. As a result copies are more likely to appear on coffee tables up and down the land rather than in a green recycling box outside the door through which they were posted.

Clearly though, presentation is not the only thing that matters. Substance is very important too – and this is currently where the Conservatives are often extremely lacking. While the magazine was good at introducing the candidate, in this case Charlotte, to the electorate, along with the causes she has been fighting for, including pub and post office closures, the party has not yet developed a detailed plan of what they aim to do in Government.

Tim Montgomerie, in a piece entitled ‘Ken Clarke: Tories will get more pro-European in office’, has highlighted a few interesting comments made by Mr Clarke at a recent conference:

I think the need to be working with Obama will influence my party on Europe. It is still firmly Eurosceptic but it’s now moderate, harmless Eurosceptism. It’s a bit silly sometimes, like which group do you join in the European parliament, but full-blooded stuff like renegotiating the treaty of accession is as dead as a dodo. We’ve got lots of ideas on European policy on energy, security, relations with Russia, climate change, all that kind of thing [but] somebody like me is far more relaxed about all that [and if the Tories] get into office the pressure of the American alliance will make them more European.

Now, let us be reminded of what Mr Peter Hitchens perceptively observed about euroscepticism:

The word ‘Eurosceptic’ means ‘a person who adopts anti-EU rhetoric in opposition, and then surrenders to the EU in government’. This is inevitable. You cannot be in the EU and not run by it, any more than you can be a little bit pregnant. If you don’t like being run by it, you must leave, as all serious students of the subject long ago realised.

Ken Clarke and Peter Hitchens will be proven right, in time. I also suppose this just confirms what I was saying yesterday really, doesn’t it?

We know well that Mr Clarke is quite stringent in his pro-EU views. (Incidentally, at least they are principled, even if I disagree with them, which is better than can be said of many other MPs and young wannabes that spring to mind). We also know that he took to the stage with Michael Heseltine, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown in 1997 to promote the Euro currency, and we know very well that he has been critical of David Cameron during his tenure as Conservative leader.

But, really, does any of this actually matter? Why is so much being made of Mr Clarke’s views on the European Union? What cause for disagreement, beyond rhetoric (which is so often meaningless these days), have Mr Clarke and Mr Cameron had so far? There is only a promise to take Conservative MEPs out the EPP-ED, which mysteriously failed to materialise, and a grudging commitment for a post ratification referendum on the Lisbon Treaty – but only if the General Election is held early, which it won’t be – that stands between them.

In fact, one wonders whether the Conservative party even has a policy on Britain’s relationship with the European Union which Mr Clarke could speak out against and break. I can’t think of one.

So, far from causing in-fighting within the parliamentary party, Ken Clarke’s re-emergence from the cold will simply mark another day of business as usual in the life of Her Majesty’s Official Opposition. Under Cameron’s leadership the anti-EU cause has not been furthered – there’s little chance that it will be.

Euroscepticism doesn’t mean anything anymore anyway – it is simply a phrase used by those in opposition who adopt anti-EU rhetoric, but when in government willingly surrender to the EU. It is inevitable. But then sadly I think we knew that already.