France: 'Autistic Tories have castrated UK in Europe'

France's minister for Europe, Pierre Lellouche, has stated that David Cameron's stance towards Europe is "pathetic" and he says it will "castrate" UK influence on the continent.

Mr Lellouche told the Guardian the Conservatives' new plan was "pathetic". "It's just very sad to see Britain, so important in Europe, just cutting itself out from the rest and disappearing from the radar map." "They have essentially castrated your UK influence in the European parliament," he added.

Lellouche also stated that other European powers would not help the Tories to renegotiate the treaties which Cameron has said he wants revisited.

Shadow foreign secretary William Hague insisted Mr Lellouche's comments did not represent the true reaction to the party's plans in Europe.

"I don't think you will find that's representative of the reaction in Paris or other European capitals," he said.

I think you'll find that this is the exact reaction from both Paris and Berlin. The Tories have aligned themselves with some of the most extreme parties in Europe, and are campaigning to remove European influence from the British parliament, so Hague is being disingenuous when he pretends that most European leaders won't object to Cameron's stance.

Mr Cameron said all future treaties would be put to a public vote.

He also promised a sovereignty bill if the Tories win the next election to "lock in" the supremacy of UK laws.

And the Tory leader vowed to repatriate powers on the Charter of Fundamental Rights, employment and criminal law - which would need the agreement of all 27 EU nations.

Cameron is setting himself on a collision course with Europe. The very fact that he needs the agreement of all 27 EU nations for some of the things he proposes gives some indication of the mountain he has to climb, and all to please the craziest buggers in his party.

He's attempting to position Britain as a member of the EU, which is subject to no EU rules which Britain doesn't agree with.

Britain can either be a member of the EU and fight for the direction in which she believes the EU should go, or she can spend all of her time arguing that she should be exempt from certain EU rules.

Cameron has chosen the latter.

Giving vent to frustration across the EU, which has so far only been expressed in private, Lellouche – who said he was reflecting Nicolas Sarkozy's "sadness and regret" – accused William Hague, the shadow foreign secretary, of a "bizarre autism" in their discussions.

He said: "They have one line and they just repeat one line. It is a very bizarre sense of autism."

Lellouche also pointed out that he has made it clear to Hague that he is wasting his time with this nonsense.

Lellouche made clear the Tories had no hope of securing support for their plans. "It's not going to happen for a minute. Nobody is going to indulge in rewriting [treaties for] many, many years. Nobody is going to play with the institutions again. It's going to be take it or leave it and they should be honest and say that," he said. "It is a time of tumultuous waters all around us. Wars, terrorism, proliferation, Afghanistan, energy with Russia, massive immigration, economic crisis. It is time when the destiny of Europe is being defined – whether or not we will exist as a third of the world's GDP capable of fighting it out on climate, on trade, on every … issue on the surface of the Earth.

"We need to be united, otherwise we will be wiped out and marginalised. None of us can do it alone. Whether you're big or small, the lesson is the same. And [Britain's] risk is one of marginalisation. Irrelevance."

Of course, Lellouche is absolutely correct. The Tory plan is one hatched out on the back of a matchbox, and yet they appear, at the moment, to be the party most likely to win the next election.

But even these insane plans have not been enough to keep all the Tories onboard.

But that position was not enough for the Tory MEP Daniel Hannan, who quit his role as the party's legal affairs spokesman in Europe, saying he intended to fight for referendums to enable Britain to become "self-governing".

When it comes to the subject of Europe, the Tory party have always been insane, mainly due to the fact that they are a bunch little England Xenophobes.

Cameron, in order to keep his party together, is playing to their very worst impulses. The reaction of Lellouche - and the walkout of Hannan - gives us some indication of what the next five years are going to look like should the Tories get elected.

We will be ostracised and forced to the sidelines, whilst some Tories - as Hannan amply demonstrated by his hissy fit walkout - will never be satisfied, no matter how extreme a position Cameron takes.

We are about to elect, if the polls are correct, these extremists to represent us in Europe. And they, if the governments of Thatcher and Major are any indication, are going to spend the next five years tearing themselves apart over the subject of Europe.

And they will get nowhere, but they'll love the fact that they are being intransigent. Welcome to the 21st century Tory party. It looks just like the 20th century version, the only difference is that this lot are even less relevant.

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David Cameron is the opposite. He isn't frightened of the ruling party. He enjoys lashing them. But he is still nervous – and with good reason – of a backbench that has consistently torn his party apart on the issue of Europe and turned on its leaders whenever they appeared to be going native on the Continent.

How else do you explain Cameron's extraordinary decision to pull out of the European People's Party grouping in the European parliament and to try and construct instead a coven of non-federalist right-wingers – a pursuit that has brought him into disrepute across Europe, lost him putative friends amongst the centre right leaders of France, Germany and the smaller countries on the fringe, and looked just plain barmy to the ordinary members of the British public who took any notice at all?

Tags: Tories, Europe, EU, Cameron, Hague, Lallouche, France