David Cameron spent the early part of this week trying to dodge the issue of what the Tories would do if the Lisbon Treaty is ratified before a possible Tory government comes to power by promoting his soundbite “one policy at a time.”

Cameron’s soundbite should not be indulged. How the Tories view Europe is highly telling about them as a party. They should be pressed on this matter because it reveals a lot of uncomfortable truths about the party.

The Conservative party only has itself to blame for the fact that Europe is an issue at this year’s annual conference.

First, it was Cameron who did the deal with Europhobic members of his own party that led to the formation of a new European parliamentary grouping, a lash-up with right wing forces such as those in Poland and Latvia. It is a completely rotten bloc.

The Conservatives are a party that wants to form the next government of Britain, yet are so out of touch with mainstream European opinion that they cannot even bear to be in a parliamentary alliance with the conservative parties that govern Germany and France.  If you go off looking for new partners to the right of the main conservative parties in the most important European economies then as night follows day you will find yourself in some very unsavoury company. The rag bag of petty nationalists and ultra free-marketeers, and all their many unpleasant opinions and dodgy political histories, is the result.  It is as much the fact of wishing to pursue this course, as the act of doing it, that is so telling.

Thus Cameron has led his party into a political discourse where the shadow minister for Europe – Mark Francois – defends to the Guardian the support his European allies give to parades of those commemorating participants in the Second World War who fought against Britain’s allies and who included members of the SS. “This is a slur which comes from the Soviet era,” argued Francois. Jonathan Freedland in the same paper has it better:

The party chairman, Eric Pickles, offered an appalling defence, telling the BBC last month that the Latvian Waffen-SS were only conscripts fighting for their country, and to say otherwise was a Soviet smear. Again, this misses the fact that a substantial minority of the Latvian Waffen-SS were eager volunteers, including veterans of pro-Nazi death squads who had already taken part in the first phase of the Holocaust – and that should be enough to decide that those who march in celebration of men who fought with Hitler, and against Britain and its allies, are beyond the pale.

The talk coming from senior Tories – at least some of whom have the grace to squirm when questioned on this topic – suggesting that it’s all terribly complicated, that it was a long time ago and that even SS members were, in some ways, themselves victims, is uncomfortably close to the kind of prattle we used to hear from those we called Holocaust revisionists.

They too tried to relativise away the crimes of the Nazi era, constantly telling us that the Soviets also did terrible things, that Hitler’s eastern European collaborators were freedom-loving patriots and all the rest of it. What is shocking is that this garbage is now coming from those defending the party poised to form the government of Britain.

The commemorations defended by Francois in this relativisation of the Nazi era – as Freedland puts it – are condemned by the leader of Riga’s Jewish community, Arkady Suharanko: “We are categorically against these ceremonies. It just makes Latvia look bad in the rest of the world. It’s not right that active politicians take part in these events.”

Simultaneously the visit to the Conservative conference of  Michal Kaminski has damaged the Tories’ attempts to present themselves as having turned a corner on homophobia.

Cameron pursued this course in order to become the leader of his party. It was a straightforward concession to the Eurosceptic Tory right. The fact that he felt he should do so is an indication of the continued weight of right wing Europhobia within the party. It remains a powerful potential source of embarrassment to the party, despite the populism that underpins it.

Boris Johnson perfectly exemplified this problem this week. Johnson may have got huffy when asked about European issues by Jeremy Paxman but he can hardly complain. He introduced the issue himself, having utilised his high profile to cock a snook at David Cameron’s one-policy-at-a-time soundbite and drum up demands for a referendum even if the treaty has been agreed by the time of the general election. It was Johnson who stoked up divisions within the Tory ranks right at the start of the conference, not the media. He has helped knock the Tories off their core messages. If nothing else it shows the power of this issue to divert and entangle the Conservative party.

The response of the leadership to the Lisbon problem is to lead a charge against the social provisions of the European Union, another indication of the attacks that can be expected on the quality of life of millions if the Conservatives win.

The whole dynamic, even as it presents itself as tapping into popular concern about Europe, is right wing, unsavoury and potentially highly damaging. It stands to isolate a British government in Europe.

It is not simply that the Tories are victims of indiscipline or concerted pro-Labour spin. The cause of the Conservatives’ problems over Europe is deep-rooted and internal. “One policy at a time” is merely a way of smoothing over this fact.