Serious signs of the breakdown in discipline within the UK Conservative Party emerge in Brussels as two Tory MEPs – Julie Girling and Richard Ashworth – quit the UK Conservative’s political group in Brussels.

They received a rousing standing ovation when they joined the leading moderate centre-right EPP (European People’s Party) Group in the European Parliament.

Perversely, Mrs Girling and Mr Ashworth still remain members of the Conservative Party. It seems the current Tory party tolerates having MEPs divided between two Groups. This runs counter to the pledges given by every Conservative Euro-candidate ahead of both the 2009 and 2014 European elections?

Julie Girling and Richard Ashworth inflicted even more damage on the European Conservatives and Reformists Group (ECR), and especially the Tory delegation, than has so far been publicly noted.  Their departure means Conservative MEPs have lost their numerical superiority over the hard-right governing party in Poland (PiS) in the ECR.

At a “forthright” ECR Group meeting on Wednesday, which European Parliament insiders compared to “an atmosphere that would have been familiar to those trapped in the Berlin bunker during April 1945”, Polish PiS MEPs were quick to demand Conservative concessions in the ECR’s internal arrangements.  These have effectively removed the last vestiges of British control.  Hardly good news during Brexit negotiations for May’s government.

And the ECR Group itself, a volatile cocktail at the best of times, is now at risk of losing ranking to Guy Verhofstadt’s liberal ALDE.  –  If ALDE can entice just two ECR MEPs to defect to the liberals, and there are plenty of unhappy MEPs in the ECR, ALDE would overtake the ECR to become the third largest Group in the European Parliament behind the second-placed Socialists and the leading EPP Group.

Many political observers regard the Tories’ first big step towards Brexit as taking place in 2009, when David Cameron ordered British Conservative MEPs out of Europe’s powerful political group in the European Parliament, the EPP.

In fulfilling Cameron’s hasty promise – made in the midst of the 2005 Conservative leadership contest and designed to secure votes from anti-European Conservative MPs – Cameron’s creation of the ECR in 2009 inevitably forced his MEPs to sit with various questionable parties including the Polish PiS.

Cameron’s decision, subsequently endorsed by his successor Theresa May, has thus this week suffered a significant reverse when these two Tory MEPs – Mrs Girling and Mr Ashworth – left the flailing British Conservative’s ECR for the mainstream EPP Group in the European Parliament.  The EPP Group now once again represents MEPs from all 28 EU Member States, including the UK.

Whether Julie Girling and Richard Ashworth can continue to ride two horses as Conservative defectors within the pro-EU EPP Group is doubtful, unless the British PM wants everyone to know that she cannot even control her MEPs in Brussels.