These Tory MPs are in tune with the country The buzzword of choice in British politics is "differentiation." The Liberal Democrats, we are told, are bursting with the desire to differentiate themselves from their Coalition partners. Chris Huhne might have been an abrasive figure, who paid too much attention as Energy Secretary to building wind farms and too little to how we can keep the lights on without vast increases in fuel and electricity bills. But within Westminster, his departure from the Cabinet has been seen as a significant loss for his party, on the grounds that he was a great differentiator for those on the Left who worried that by entering government with the Conservatives, the Lib Dems had sold their soul. Over the past couple of days, however, the Tories have done some differentiating of their own. As The Sunday Telegraph reported yesterday, more than 100 of David Cameron's MPs (as well as some from other parties) are urging him to fix the damage inflicted by Mr Huhne by slashing the subsidies for wind turbines and making it easier for communities to block their construction. Today, a similar number have written to this newspaper to argue that ministers should - as suggested in a recent report by the think tank Open Europe - exercise their right to opt out of a host of European Union rules on crime and policing, including the European Arrest Warrant. These interventions will inevitably be couched in terms of ministers vs backbenchers, of a restive party testing its leader's mettle. In fact, they provide a useful reminder of what ministers, trapped by the demands of collective responsibility and basic collegiality, often cannot say: that on many issues, there are robustly Conservative alternatives to the Coalition's agreed policies that are both more popular and more sensible. On wind farms, the economics are almost as horrifying as the aesthetics. On Europe, reform is equally badly needed, and we commend the signatories of today's letter for saying so. A party's preoccupations tell us much about its identity. The Tories are often accused of being obsessed with Europe - yet their MPs" suggestions not only chime with public opinion, but would be of significant help to the country. Compare that with the sorry spectacle yesterday of Tim Farron, the president of the Lib Dems, attempting to draw a moral equivalence between Britain and the dictatorship in Syria, on the grounds that our Upper House is appointed rather than elected. In the wake of the Alternative Vote fiasco, the Lib Dems" bizarre preoccupation with Lords reform suggests that their real differences are not with the Tories, but with the cares and concerns of the ordinary voter.