So, Cameron announces that the Tories are set to leave the European People's Party (EPP) in order to garner some cheap anti-European headlines ... I mean provide real opposition to the Brussels bureaucracy. Presumably he'll worry about the headlines generated by some of the more, uh, fruity thoughts on race on the part of their potential partners in the Shiny New Group at a later date.

In the wake of Conservative MEP Christopher Beazley resolutely refusing to toe the party line on this one and annoucing that he'll both stand down at the next election and apply for full membership of the EPP, it emerges that prodigal Shadow Cabinet Minister Ken Clarke was formerly wholly against Cameron's stance on this issue (via the Guardian):

"A lot will depend on relations with Europe, because Obama doesn't want his strongest European ally led by a right wing nationalist, he wants them to be a key player inside Europe and he'll start looking at whoever is in Germany or France if we start being isolationist."

Blimey.

Obviously this was all said before he got the gig as Lord Mandelson's Foil in Another Place (what was the point of that one?) and now you can't get a cigarette paper between them on any issue. Really.

But maybe Ken has a point about whether they will wear this in Washington?

At the very least it's worth considering whether America's first black President will be entirely happy chatting with a Conservative leader whose party is in an alliance with the Polish Law and Justice Party (said to be supportive of his plans), one of whose MPs said that Obama's election marked "the end of white man's civilisation."

Just a thought.