Europe

William Hague’s conference speech caps a revival in his political fortunes, and it also showed how far the government has come since the pre-election period, when Tory foreign policy was indistinct. After one year in office, the government’s roster of foreign policy achievements is noteworthy. The coalition has overseen institutional innovations in the form of the National Security Council and organisational improvements at the Foreign Office. Embassies are opening, not closing. Diplomats are again being taught traditional skills, not trying to follow the latest foreign policy fad. Cooperation between DfiD and the Foreign Office is also much better than it was under Labour, with Andrew Mitchell and William Hague conferring regularly on key issues.

              Today’s ‘cat-flap’ between Ken Clarke and Theresa May exposes one of the largest divides in the Conservative party today. May, along with most Tory MPs, wants to get rid of the human rights act, while Clarke and the attorney general Dominic Grieve want to keep it. May, to the surprise of her colleagues, used a pre-conference interview with the Sunday Telegraph to make clear her desire to get rid of the act. After this, there was always going to be a reaction from Clarke & Co. One ally of the Justice Secretary tells me that his comments today were spurred, in part, by an irritation that he hadn’t seen the text of the Home Secretary’s speech before she delivered it.

George Osborne told a Conservative Party increasingly wary of expensive climate policies that Britain needs to "cut [its] carbon emissions no slower but also no faster than our fellow countries in Europe. That’s what I’ve insisted on in the recent carbon budget."  What he actually insisted on was what Chris Huhne described as "a review of progress in early 2014 to ensure our own carbon targets are in line with the EU’s".  Even if that review is serious, and energy intensive industries have every reason to be sceptical, it is only going to hold our policy to the same standard as today.  The current targets require us to cut our emissions faster than our European competitors, and the policies we are adopting to meet them are far more draconian.

In a surprisingly testy interview on the Andrew Marr show, David Cameron defended the government’s approach to Europe, the economy and planning. But before the interview really got going, Cameron had to reiterate his Sunday Times’ apology (£) to women for the patronising comments he has made in the Commons chamber. This is hardly an ideal start to conference for a party leader who is struggling to maintain female support. On the Eurozone, Cameron was blunt that its problems were a threat to “the British economy and the world economy”. He also risked a clash with Nicolas Sarkozy by demanding that “action needs to be taken in the coming weeks to strengthen Europe’s banks”.

As Peter Oborne observed on Newsnight recently, there is a tendency in the Eurozone to think its problems are political, rather than an economic crisis that cannot be wished away. For example, the Bundestag's much vaunted approval of an expanded EFSF has done little to alleviate Europe's weakness. Here's why: 1) We all knew the vote would pass: the opposition support made sure of that. The key point was that Angela Merkel got an absolute majority. It was a close call, but it always seemed likely that she would gain enough support from the flailing junior coalition party, the FDP, which, given its collapsing poll results, was unlikely to threaten the stability of the coalition for fear of further falls.

A showdown with the EU may come sooner than we expect. The European Commission has today threatened to sue David Cameron’s government unless it starts letting EU citizens come here to claim benefits. Until now, any EU citizen could live here, but if they couldn’t find work, they were not entitled to claim benefits. This was widely accepted. Today, the EU has issued a statement saying: ‘Under UK law, certain social security benefits - namely Child Benefit, Child Tax Credit, State Pension Credit, Income-based Allowance for Jobseekers, Income-based Employment and Support Allowance - are only granted to persons with a "right to reside" in the UK. Other EU nationals have to fulfil additional conditions in order to pass a so-called 'right to reside' test.

James Forsyth has interviewed the foreign secretary, William Hague, in tomorrow’s issue of the Spectator. Here is an extended version of the piece that will appear in the magazine. Politicians normally have to wait for the history books for vindication. But for William Hague it has come early. All his warnings about the dangers of the euro, so glibly mocked at the time, have come to pass. But, as he makes clear when I meet him in his study in the Foreign Office days before the start of Tory conference, he is not enjoying this moment. Rather, he is absorbed with trying to sort out the mess that others have created.

Chris Patten has held almost every great and good job the great and the good can offer: Governor of Hong Kong, Companion of Honour, European Commissioner, Chancellor of the University of Oxford and Chairman of the BBC Trust. Only his parents’ decision to send him to a Catholic church will prevent him becoming Archbishop of Canterbury and winning the game of establishment bingo with a full house. Patten features in Peter Oborne and Frances Weaver’s strange polemic against British supporters of the Euro. (Strange because Gordon Brown and the Labour Party stopped Britain joining the Euro so the authors have no crime to accuse the “guilty men” of – other than being wrong.