Bale, Tim. "Between a Soft and a Hard Place? The Conservative Party, Valence Politics and the Need for a New ‘Eurorealism". Parliamentary Affairs, Vol.59, No.3 (2006): 385-400.

Bale, Tim. "Between a Soft and a Hard Place? The Conservative Party, Valence Politics and the Need for a New ‘Eurorealism". Parliamentary Affairs, Vol.59, No.3 (2006): 385-400.

• European integration has placed particular political strain on the Tory Party in Britain, as it has traditionally defined itself in terms of national sovereignty, parliamentary rights, and patriotic identity; some of which are at odds with support for European integration. Joining the EU led to the fracturing of British Tories in the 1980s and 1990s, robbing the party of unity on the issue of European integration (385).
• By the end of the 1990s, the Tory stance on European integration became decidedly more eurosceptic, as the party conglomerated around a harder stance to secure unity versus political rivals. This was largely driven by demographic changes, as the Tory electorate became more eurosceptic (386).
• Reasons behind eurosceptic attitudes, however, very widely within the Conservative Party: including a range of reasons from protectionism and free-trade globalism, and from national sovereignty to identity politics. Classical distinctions between soft and hard Eurosceptics fail to account for these differences (386-387).
• The Conservative Party does seem prepared to change its stance on the EU once again under the Cameron government, adopting a more pragmatic position to avoid being stereotyped as 'out of touch' by its Labour rivals (387-388).
• Europe seems to have played a relatively minor role in British politics during the early 2000s, with only 7% of those interviewed in one case listed UK-EU relations as an important issue (389).
• Discussions on the Tory's policy on EU integration during this period are based on a split between different levels of strategy. The party needs to consider whether it can better compete against Labour by dropping the unpopular European issues or if it should maintain Euroscepticism in order to stop losing party members to UKIP (395).
• The writer also suggests that the decision of the Cameron government to remove its representatives from the EPP-ED bloc in European Parliament, and the associated policy hardening, constitutes a strategy to differentiate itself from a more openly pro-EU Labour Party, covering up otherwise plan policy similarities (397).