Tory battle lines over the single currency were drawn more sharply last night with Mr Michael Heseltine attacking the Conservative leader, Mr William Hague, for his "unnecessary" toughening of the opposition's policy. Mr Heseltine's attack came after he confirmed that he shared Mr David Curry's analysis that the Tories risked marginalisation and alienation.
On Saturday Mr Curry became the first shadow cabinet casualty of the new party policy, quitting his job as agriculture spokesman.
But the shadow chancellor, Mr Peter Lilley, predicted that those with "deeply-held and highly-optimistic views" about economic and monetary union, including proEMU businessmen, would in time recognise that it was right to defend the pound.
But the former Home Office minister, Ms Ann Widdecombe, now a Tory backbencher, attacked the leadership, saying it had been provocative to depart from the previous policy which held the party together, ruling out participation "for the foreseeable future".
Labour Ministers were seeking to adopt a statesman-like silence above the Tory fray. The Chancellor, Mr Gordon Brown, restricted himself to welcoming Tories who backed his pro-European consensus in the national interest.
But privately Ministers were revelling in what they saw as Tory discomfort, some stunned that the Tories should have begun another fierce internal wrangle so soon after Mr Hague's apparently successful bid to assert himself at Conservative conference.