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		Tory MEPs in bad company Daily Telegraph editorial - October 26 2002 David Heathcoat-Amory's brave decision to leave the European People's Party (EPP) highlights a glaring anomaly in the Tories' approach to the EU. Since 1992, Tory MEPs have sat with the most federalist group in Europe. The EPP wants an elected President of Europe, a single seat on the UN Security Council, a European army and police force, a federal constitution and a pan-European income tax. It is also well to the Left of New Labour, campaigning for highly regulated employment markets, redistributive taxation and powerful trade unions. Although Conservatives like to claim that they are not bound by any of these things, the EPP constitution makes clear that they must accept "the common policies of the group". How, you might ask, did the Tories ever make so unlikely a match? The truth is that a previous generation of Conservative MEPs quietly shared many of the EPP's views, and even the then party chairman, Chris Patten, did not regard them as especially outré. Ten years on, however, the mood has changed. Almost every Conservative MP - and a fair number of MEPs - will applaud Mr Heathcoat-Amory for walking out of the EPP caucus on the Convention (the body charged with drawing up an EU constitution). Many will ask why the Conservative MEPs do not follow, and set up an explicitly anti-federalist bloc in the European Parliament with other mainstream centre- Right parties. Iain Duncan Smith was thought to be in favour of such a realignment, but something seems to be holding him back. Perhaps he is reluctant to cross Ken Clarke and the other elderly grandees whom he defeated last year. If so, he is making a tactical blunder. These men have never reconciled themselves to the fact of his leadership, and will continue to mutter against him whatever he does. Far more ominous is the frustration among those who did vote for him. Mr Duncan Smith believes, not without justice, that his principled conduct as a backbencher throughout the 1990s has earned him the benefit of the doubt from what today is his party's mainstream. But it will be by his current actions, not by his deeds of the last century, that his leadership will prosper.