A damned silly end to a damned silly bill

The UK Tories spent the second half of 2010 being very sensible, turning an electoral situation where they had failed to win a majority against a deeply unpopular Labour government into a reasonably strong coalition government with the Liberal Democrats which is allowing them to make the largest public spending cuts in Britain for several generations.

They have started 2011 by needlessly opening a row over the utterly pointless European Union (Referendum Lock) Bill. Last night 27 of the Tories' 305 MPs voted against their own government's bill, even after Europe minister David Lidington promised to make last-minute changes to toughen it up.

This is not the first time that Mr Cameron has faced a rebellion on Europe and it won't be the last. Since the May 2010 election, there have been three rebellions on Europe, with the largest being when 37 Tory MPs broke the government line to demand a cut in the EU budget. Meanwhile, probably the biggest rebellion will occur when legislation is presented to give the right to vote to thousands of Britain's prisoners, following the recent ruling that the UK is breaching the European Convention on Human Rights by denying all of its prisoners the right to vote.

The Referendum Lock Bill was designed to appease Tory eurosceptics when David Cameron and William Hague realised that they could not hold a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty after it had already been ratified. It was supposed to make sure that a referendum would have to be held on any proposed treaty change in the future.

Yet Mr Cameron signed up to the modest changes agreed at the December summit and claims that there is no need for a referendum on this because Britain is not in the eurozone.

He is right of course, but that has not stopped the hardcore eurosceptics. Not only are they furious about the December summit, but have also tabled amendments which expressly re-affirmed the sovereignty of the UK Parliament and would have prevented European courts from ruling against decisions made by the UK Parliament.

The problem with the bill is that it does not really do anything. It is not binding on future parliaments and governments. EU law retains its supremacy over UK law as it does for every member state. Rulings on the implementation of EU law will remain, as they have to, subject ultimately to the European Court of Justice.

It will not change Britain's relationship with the EU in any substantive way. Put plainly, it is a waste of time and paper. The problem for Mr Cameron is that many of the eurosceptics, who are now so unhappy about this bill, voted for him in the 2005 Tory leadership election because of his promise to remove the Tory MEPs from the centre-right European People's Party in the European Parliament whereas his main opponent, David Davies, despite being no europhile himself, had been a government whip when the Maastricht Treaty was passed.

Moreover, for a politician who is so tactically adept and skilful, Mr Cameron does not seem to have realised that such a bill would never be enough. The truth is that thousands of Tory activists and a large number of MPs do not want safeguards against the EU getting more competences: they either want to repatriate large chunks of policy-making to Westminster or want Britain to leave the EU completely.

Mr Cameron cannot offer them this, especially when his government is propped up by the pro-European Liberal Democrats. His tough stance in opposing all amendments to the bill was perhaps a sign that he is showing the Liberal Democrats that he is prepared to take on his eurosceptics, but John Major did that in the 1990s and paid a heavy price for it.

Of course, any observer of British politics knows that Europe has been an open wound in the Tory party for over twenty years. Divisions over the Exchange Rate Mechanism and what became Economic and Monetary Union helped finish off Margaret Thatcher's premiership and John Major's position as Prime Minister was continually undermined, after the Maastricht Treaty was narrowly passed in 1993, by what he described as the eurosceptic 'bastards' in his cabinet.

So Mr Cameron is learning the hard way that being pragmatic and giving Britain a voice alongside Germany and France means that he inevitably will alienate a large number of Tory activists and a vocal minority of Tory MPs.

The lesson Mr Cameron must learn from this debacle is that he cannot be ameliorative in Brussels and build strong relationships with the likes of Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel while trying, but failing, to bang the eurosceptic drum in Westminster.

He has to choose between the two, otherwise this will undermine the Tories' trust in their leader and cause more problems in the future.

Ben Fox is a political adviser to the Socialists and Democrats group's vice-chairman of the European Parliament's economic and monetary affairs committee.