"TONY BLAIR can't have it both ways on Europe." It's a cry from the heart of the Tory official, as he rejects suggestions of Conservative division and disarray.
"Where we led, Labour followed. On the `wait and see' policy on the single currency. On the promised referendum.
"Mr Blair says he won't allow Britain to be isolated. We cut up rough over fish and quota-hopping, and threaten to use the veto - he says he's prepared to do the same.
The Tory has a point. Labour has tracked every twist and turn of Tory policy on Europe. True, Mr Blair is committed to sign up to the Social Chapter. But on the currency issue he entered the election refusing to be outflanked by increasingly pronounced Tory doubts. Since then he appears to have moved to the right of the prime minister. Just nine days ago Robin Cook, Labour's foreign secretary-in-waiting, virtually ruled out British membership of the currency for the lifetime of the next parliament.
That is precisely the position Mr Major (under pressure frem Kenneth Clarke and Michael Heseltine) was unable to deliver for his Eurosceptics. Yet Mr Blair continues to have a field day - taunting Mr Major for his failure of leadership, in Europe and in his party.
In a rerun of the failed Beef War, the Tories worked themselves into a lather on Monday on behalf of British trawlermen being told to cut their catches. In Devon yesterday, pro-European Paddy Ashdown faced the wrath of farmers angry at being "ruled by Brussels" - a real, live focus group.
Mr Blair is ever sensitive to such groups. And we may be sure they're telling him what they think about Europe. With no acknowledgment of his previous error, the Lab our leader clarifies his position: "Where Britain's interests are at stake, of course we are prepared to be isolated." But the accompanying message is that, unlike the Tories, Labour will not seek isolation. Gordon Brown even made the grandiose claim that Labour's "record" showed it would be more successful in finding agreement through its positive approach.
It was obviously forgotten that Labour's record has been of 18 years in opposition.
After last week's policy "wobble" senior Labour sources said part of the difficulty was that the media had written off the Tories and were applying a stiffer test to the alternative government.
But the media is applying the governmental test to Mr Major, as Tory candidates across Britain line up to defy his cabinet's agreed "wait and see" policy on the single currency.
A wise Tory told me last autumn: "We've won the battle on the single currency. We should pipe down now, and leave it alone." The MP in question is not a Major loyalist. A natural High Tory, he declined to back Mr Major in either of his leadership contests. But neither is he one of the barmy brigade, that particularly awkward squad for whom Mr Major thought the men in white coats should have come long ago.
Mr Major must wish the Eurosceptics had heard and heeded their colleague. Alas, for him, they didn't. Faced with the reality that they would do so anyway, Mr Major last week gave candidates (who were not ministers) carte blanche to say what they liked on the issue in their personal election address.
The latest to do so, Dame Angela Rumbold, is a senior vice-chairman of the party, with responsibility for the candidates.
She declared bluntly: "I won't vote for it ... I feel bound as a matter of principle not to tell people I haven't made up my mind because I have made up my mind.. . I tell the electorate what I think on other issues. Surely I should do that on Europe.
The "wait and see" policy was a carefully, painfully crafted compromise, born of the knowledge that any move beyond it would almost certainly have forced Chancellor Clarke to quit the cabinet. He is said privately to recognise there is not a cat in hell's chance of a Tory government joining the currency in the short term.
Now the truth is out, and the party's instinctive Euroscepticism has free reign. But the charge is that Mr Major's wait and see approach can carry no conviction in future negotiations when so many of his prospective MPs are prepared to foreclose on the option: the headlines a reminder of that immovable Tory fault line.
Labour cheerfully has the Tories plunging "headlong into civil war". They would, wouldn't they? But the charge will surely chime with an already deeply rooted public perception. The real test for Labour would, of course, come in government.
From its spokesmen there is already an echo of Douglas Hurd's vain hope that British influence would shape Europe in the British interest. Time, as they say, will tell. But those are issues for another day, indeed - on the single currency - for another election.
For this election at least, they're all Eurosceptics!