DAVID CAMERON’S speech on Europe, and his decision to drop his promised referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, continues to reverberate.

Two Tory Euro MPs – legal affairs spokesman Daniel Hannan and employment spokesman Roger Helmer – have quit their front bench posts in protest.

Meanwhile, French minister Pierre Lellouche has been forced to backtrack unconvincingly on his description of the Tories’ stance on Europe as “pathetic” and insist he could work with Mr Cameron.

Of course, it all represents nothing more than a squabble compared to the huge battle Mr Cameron would have faced with other European leaders if he became Prime Minister and insisted on going ahead with a referendum on the treaty.

The treaty has become law anyway and Mr Cameron’s undoubted priority, should he win the election, will be to balance the country’s books.

Although he faces the inevitable accusations of backtracking from a “cast iron” commitment to a referendum, it is pragmatic politics to focus on the country’s financial crisis and unprecedented public sector squeeze.

Management of the economy, amid a stream of unpopular cuts in services across the country, will dominate the agenda of the next government.

Mr Cameron has done the right thing to get the diversion of a “Euro bust-up” out of the way, while promising to work towards bringing back some powers from Brussels within the lifetime of a parliament.

But the fall-out from his new strategy is nevertheless a reminder that unrest will never be far from the Tory Party’s surface when it comes to the thorny subject of Europe.