David Cameron needs your support. Nine months ago, he announced that, as leader of the British Conservative Party, he would sever our party’s links with the ultra-federalist European People’s Party (EPP). In its place, he promised, he would create Conservative Group in the European Parliament, dedicated to national independence and personal freedom. Since then, he has been violently attacked by the Left-wing press – and, disgracefully, by a handful of Tories. Leaving the EPP, claim the Euro-zealots, will mean “leaving the mainstream”, “lurching to the Right” and “abandoning the modernising agenda”.

This is drivel of course. There is nothing mainstream about the palaeo-federalism of the EPP, which wants a European army and police force, a single EU seat on the UN Security Council, and a pan-European income tax to be levied by the EPP. Nor is there anything Right-wing about believing in parliamentary sovereignty. Outside the EPP, we would sit with respectable Centre-Right parties, many of them in government in their home countries, who believe in personal liberty, free markets and the Atlantic alliance. And nothing could be less modern than the 1950s vision of a European superstate to which the EPP continues to cling, despite its repeated rejection in referendums.

It is a fact of politics that, when a change is proposed, some of the old guard dig in. Equally, those who support the reform tend to sit back and say nothing. In consequence, those who oppose David Cameron on this issue are making all the running.

In the interests of fairness, let me direct you to the two websites that set out the arguments on each side. www.epp-ed.blogspot.com makes the case for remaining where we are; www.adieu-epp.com makes the case for setting up our own group. Look at both sites and make your own mind up.

If you think we should stay with the EPP, fine. I disagree, but the Tory party is a broad alliance. But if you share my and David’s view that we should fight for a different sort of Europe, for Heaven’s sake say so. If you have a local Conservative MP, write to him and tell what you think. If you don’t, write directly to the Shadow Foreign Secretary, William Hague. But please don’t just take things for granted. Again and again, we British have made the mistake of ignoring until too late what is happening on the European mainland. Let’s not do it again.