Tories: We were against the Copenhagen development deal before we were for it

The European Union has agreed a £6.5 billion three-year package to fast-track the response to global warming in the poorest countries. Britain will provide £1.5 billion.

Tory DFID spokesman Andrew Mitchell has attacked the EU's pledge on Copenhagen development assistance fund as 'fiscal incontinence', speaking to the climate-sceptic ConservativeHome website.

While, within eight minutes, Tory environment spokesman Greg Clark seems to have backed it as "important and necessary".

Well done Mr Clark, among the leading would-be progressive Tories, though as Anne McElvoy reports in the New Statesman, the idea of competing for the progressive label began "as a sort of joke" among the FoCs (Friends of Cameron).

Clark's comments which are coming under attack from Conservative activists, exemplifying some difficult balancing acts for the opposition party in its response to Copenhagen. The Australian party split had led to warnings within the party in the UK too that climate change can split Conservative parties around the world.

The party leadership is committed to action on climate change and international development, as well as to fiscal conservatism and Euroscepticism.

The party grassroots want to see deeper spending cuts, more Euroscepticism and are pretty dismissive of the threat of cimate change.

So the Conservatives will not be announcing their policy until after Copenhagen.

By which time they hope to have one.