The arcane media spectacle yesterday of the chief rabbi of Poland in prime-time radio debate over the apparently vexed issue of the teenage political fantasies of an obscure right-wing Polish MEP was bizarre. That an interview with one unknown foreigner about another unknown foreigner should have become key to an argument about the Tories’ choice of partners in the European Parliament was a useful reminder to the Official Opposition of Europe’s potential for getting everybody — but especially the British Conservative Party — into a debilitating and time-wasting tangle.

In the event the rabbi rode to the Tories’ rescue by declining to describe Michal Kaminski, MEP, as being, today, the anti-Semitic extremist loon that David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, claimed to see. Well, one did rather think Mr Miliband had been going over the top. But for the Tories to be thrown a lifeline by the chief rabbi of Poland is a less than optimal position for a soon-to-be governing British party to find itself in.

In fact I suspect that Mr Cameron and his close colleagues are, for the most part, and like so many of us, profoundly Euro-bored. My guess is that (again, like so many of us) he finds the EU vaguely irritating and, as for the European Ideal, is a stranger to all enthusiasm on the subject; but that he reacts with a shudder to the possibility that the first government he leads should be consumed, as the Tories have so often been, by raging internal antipathies about Europe.

If so, he’s having a better Euro-autumn than may be apparent. If there have to be headlines with the words “Tories”, “row” and “Europe” in them, the row about his party joining the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) is arguably a useful distraction from the sharper issues. Labour may huff and puff, but everyone knows that in international affairs you may make alliances with weirdos and worse; there are (for instance) so many good reasons for thinking a Tony Blair bid for the European presidency a dreadful idea; but Mr Blair’s backing from Silvio Berlusconi is not one of them. This row about the Tories’ foreign pals is running out of steam.

Far more significant and potentially troublesome has been the Tories’ problem with the Lisbon treaty, which this weekend looks unstoppable. But that, I believe, is good news for David Cameron and William Hague.

They won’t say so, of course; they’ll say they were hoping against hope that ratification would not have been completed by the time we go to the polls, so a Tory government could have given Britain the chance to say “no”.

It is not for me to call this last claim disingenuous. Just possibly Mr Cameron, and more likely Mr Hague, really did want the first year of a new Conservative government to be engulfed in a flaming row over a referendum, whose outcome would undoubtedly have been a rejection of the treaty. But if senior Tories did want this they mistook their own best interests. The fury of all our heavyweight European partners, though unreasonable, would have been a fact. They would have been incandescent. The Americans would have turned away in dismay from the fist fight on our side of the Atlantic. And the Conservative Party — by now in government and struggling to launch its manifesto reform programme in the middle of a huge cash crisis, trade union unrest and public anger over cuts — would have turned in on itself again.

It would be fanciful to say that Tory pro-Europeans have any longer the morale or numbers to conduct a civil war. But pro and anti-Europeanism in Britain, and in the British Conservative Party, are like an onion: inner skins encased in outer skins, themselves encased. The core contingent in the Parliamentary Conservative Party that would vote “yes” in a Lisbon referendum is tiny — though Kenneth Clarke (whose part in the next Conservative government will be crucial) would be a very significant leader of the group — and would indeed lead a group, whatever he says.

But when the terms start shifting, the questions often change. Who is to say that, in response to continental fury and the threat of reprisals, “in or out?” would not become the question? At this point the internal Tory line-ups are very different, and more evenly matched. Some Eurosceptics would lose their nerve; others reveal themselves as viscerally hostile. And the same is true of voters, who like to rage against Europe to pollsters but become unnerved at their own reflection (as Margaret Thatcher discovered) when their politicians try to mirror them.

This referendum, with all its attendant known and unknown unknowns, has, as October 2009 departs, disappeared into the realm of might-have-beens. Cameron should breathe a secret sight of relief. He is left, of course, to put flesh on his “we won’t let matters rest” commitment; but that’s surely more manageable. He won’t have to let matters rest. A Tory government can keep a nice little battle going over a manageable set of demands that the Eurosceptics will say is not ambitious enough and the Europhiles will say is unachievable and will end in a messy draw. That looks containable in a way a referendum might not have been.

There are voices in the party urging Cameron to up the stakes, now that “not letting matters rest” is the battle-cry; to pick a big fight on some chosen Euro-issue and aim for a big victory. He should resist them. Nobody present at his Manchester conference picked up the vibes of a renascent pugilism among Tory Eurosceptics; and his Europhiles are subdued. Europe as an issue looks to me set to continue as an ulcer; why break it back open as a newly bleeding wound on the Tory body politic?

As it is with Mr Cameron’s party, so it is with our country. Governments rise and governments fall, all promising a new start in European affairs; but Britain’s destiny is to grumble, to drag our feet and to string along — for the moment — with an ill grace, forever declaring that we really must decide whether to embrace our European destiny or reject it; and never quite doing either.

It is, in its way, a noble fence to sit on, the seat (despite themselves) finally settled upon by Margaret Thatcher, John Major, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. As autumn turns to winter and soon to spring, I see David Cameron too, edging towards that honourable perch. Vive l’irrésolution!

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