It is time to stop being obsessed by Europe, time to bury the hatchet - in the ground, not between each other's shoulder blades

Chris Patten

With the vote on the next leader looming for Conservative MPs next week, Mr Patten called for some "intellectual spring cleaning" within the party and a more "moderate and intelligent" tone.

Addressing the Action Centre for Europe (ACE) in London, Mr Patten, who is the European Commissioner for external relations, said the Tories' second successive spectacular electoral disaster was an even more serious reversal than the first.

Carry on regardless

The party had to keep its nerve, but that did not mean "blithely carrying on regardless".

He added: "Opportunist populism could conceivably only be justified if it delivered the goods. It did not.

"We certainly need a more moderate tone on Europe. It is time to stop being obsessed by the issue, time to bury the hatchet - in the ground, not between each other's shoulder blades."

Mr Patten ruled himself out of the Tory leadership race as soon as Mr Hague stood down and his comments will be seen as an endorsement of ken Clarke, the most pro-European of the five candidates chasing the leadership.

Lady Thatcher: Brought down by Europe

He told ACE that it was time to build a new platform on Europe - "a Conservative platform, not a proto-UKIP one."

Mr Patten went on: "Let us face up to a few facts: it is simply not true to say that Europe is on the way to becoming a superstate, any more than it is true that we have nothing to learn from the way some of our European partners run their affairs.

"Let us come up with practical ways to express the very Conservative view that an ever-closer relationship between the people of Europe need not and should not mean ever-dwindling nation states."

Dare to hold referendum

He said that harping on about the single currency would not win the next election for the Conservatives and the issue would be settled by a referendum "should the prime minister dare to hold one".

Mr Patten warned: "Turning opposition into the single currency into an article of faith of Conservatism does not win votes and will not return us to power."

He hit out at Tory attacks on the EU's rapid reaction force, which some senior Conservatives have condemned as challenging Nato.

The Tories, he said, should be backing the greater military capability that was obviously needed rather than undermining a strategy supported by Nato's secretary general Lord Robertson.

Championing

"Let us take the lead as Conservatives in championing enlargement, the notion of a Europe that is at last genuinely whole and genuinely free, a European Union that is synonymous with the borders of Europe."

Mr Patten said the Tories would be taken more seriously if they started behaving as if it really expected to form a government again in the near future.

"The next four years must be about being both an effective opposition and a credible alternative government.

"We need a broadly based, inclusive party, speaking sensibly to the people on issues which matter to them.

"We must show, too, when it comes to giving the whole party the choice of a leader to rise to this challenge that we are not irredeemably slow learners."