WHEN THE going gets tough, what does any self-respecting politician do?

Duck behind a handy smoke screen, of course.

And that's precisely where around 100 Tory MPs are preparing to dive with the announcement that they will fight the next election on a platform of opposition to further European integration.

An internal survey of the more right-wing Tories found most want to back a referendum on any further integration, and they also oppose a single European currency.

This is not a pledge for total rejection of Europe, we understand, merely a promise to continue sitting on the rapidly disintegrating fence which is starting to splinter under the sheer weight of Conservative posteriors.

In the unlikely event of these ditherers being re-elected, they will have ample opportunity to slide off unnoticed in either direction - they hope.

Surely those with an ounce of commonsense should by now have realised that after years of wrangling, debates and half-promises, Europe is a timebomb ticking away.

It would be foolhardy to think the debate will continue much longer.

It has dragged on long enough, and the British electorate now has the right to expect it to be settled one way or the other.

While the rest of the Europe gets on with it, Britain has remained the sole stumbling block, always at the fringe, always digging in its heels and fudging major issues.

Any politician who thinks they can get re-elected on a platform of continued waffling is clearly onto a loser.

In any case, they are deluding themselves if they think Europe is the ticket to election salvation.

Yes, Europe is an issue. But, to the average person in the street, unemployment, taxes, schooling and health care are of far more immediate importance than the prospect of a single currency which has yet to become something tangible in their pockets.

Any politician with even one ear to the ground would know that.

However, it appears there are a hundred or so who are blissfully unaware of our feelings.

Instead, they hope to cash in on the cheap sensationalism of the more gutter-minded tabloid press which daily fuels xenophobia with its over-the-top stories on mad cow disease and that ancient 1966 football.

We do not, as these papers would have us believe, all think the civilised world ends at Dover.

Indeed, Britain would not be the place it is today if our ancestors had not travelled the world in search of fresh opportunities.

MPs would do well to remember it was the British public which voted, in a referendum, to join Europe.

It was the politicians' job then to go ahead and make it work for us.

Instead, we're still half way down the road, with our elected representatives scattering in all directions like a flock of frightened sheep every time something of major importance comes up.

The party which wins the next general election will not be the one which promises a feeble, please everyone, achieve nothing manifesto.

It will be the one which presents a united front on all issues of major importance.

One with the guts to say what it will do and then get on with doing it.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.