DAVID CAMERON has been warned that he will be shunned by fellow leaders from the Right if he carries out his threat to withdraw his MEPs from the main group in Europe.

The Tory leader has been told that senior figures such as Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, and Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian Prime Minister, are threatening to cut bilateral relations.

In all 11 leaders of right-wing governments and parties have said that they will refuse to work with Mr Cameron if he withdraws Tory MEPs from the European People’s Party grouping in the European Parliament. The list includes Nicolas Sarkozy, the French Interior Minister and likely presidential candidate, and Mariano Rasjoy, the head of the opposition Spanish Popular Party.

The disclsoure in Le Monde came only a week after senior Tories visited Washington to begin rebuilding shattered relations with the US Republicans. This came after a trip to Brussels by William Hague, the Shadow Foreign Secretary, to try to find new allies for the Conservatives’ 27 MEPs, some of whom object strongly to leaving the EPP.

Hans-Gert Pöttering, president of the EPP, confirmed that he had told Mr Cameron in December that he would lose access to the 11 prominent right-wing leaders across Europe. Herr Pöttering told Le Monde: “I hope that it will make him think again.” Mr Cameron considers the grouping to be too federalist and pledged during his campaign to become Tory leader to withdraw them.

The leaders devised their strategy during a summit at Meise, near Brussels, on December 15, it was revealed. The Times reported at the time that Mr Cameron was invited but did not attend.

According to Wilfried Martens, the leader of the EPP, “the 11 leaders of government present decided to discontinue working bilaterally with Mr Cameron if he imposed the secession of his elected members from the group”. Mr Martens informed Mr Cameron of this by a letter written in their name.

M Sarkozy met Mr Cameron on January 6. Le Monde added: “Noticing the embarrassment of Mr Cameron, M Sarkozy advised him . . . to take his time, in order to keep to his electoral promises.”

A spokesman for Mr Cameron said that the meeting with M Sarkozy was friendly and constructive. He added: “We have made clear that leaving the EPP is the right thing for us to do and we are confident that, faced with that reality, those parties would want to be sensible and constructive about relations with us.”

Gary Titley, the Labour leader in the European Parliament, said: “Mr Cameron is putting political dogma before British interests. It is clear that he and the Tories would be a liability for Britain.”

Mr Cameron’s stardust is wearing off, according to two polls in today’s papers. A Mori poll in The Sun had 38 per cent of people saying that they would vote Labour if there was an election tomorrow, compared with 35 per cent for the Conservatives. This represents a 5 per cent drop for the Tories since last month. A YouGov poll for The Daily Telegraph put the Conservatives two points ahead of Labour, at 38 per cent to 36 per cent; 63 per cent of people agreed that the Tory leader “talks a good line but it is hard to know whether there is any substance behind the words”.

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