This week’s Conservative Party Conference is a challenge for party leader David Cameron and shadow foreign secretary William Hague, who try to postpone any meaningful announcement on a Tory policy on Europe. The promised referendum on the Lisbon Treaty hangs on a thinning thread. After the Irish referendum, the amending treaty has been approved in all 27 member states. Despite the undoubted democratic legitimacy of the treaty, two presidential signatures are still needed for formal ratificatio