EU referendum: Adam Afriyie, the first man of Tory self-sacrifice Thanks to his decision to table an amendment demanding that the EU referendum, as promised by David Cameron for 2017, be brought forward to October of next year, Adam has achieved the first half of his dream. At least 140 of the 147 Tory MPs elected for the first time in 2010 put their names to an online request that he cease this nonsense and behave, and the word is that previous intakes will do the same if he fails to take the hint. He has united the entire parliamentary party on this lethally schismatising issue to a degree unseen since the Maastricht Treaty. Observers of Westminster pond life will be wearily familiar with the serially treacherous affecting to be arch loyalists. In Adam, uniquely, we find the precise reverse: a politician of such unflinching loyalty, and so selflessly indifferent to his own interests, that he has deliberately laid down his career to strengthen Mr Cameron. Now it has to be admitted that there are those who either cannot or will not accept this. Some cling defiantly to the misapprehension that he is an arrogant and unembarrassable fantasist in the Jeffrey Archer mould, closeted in the mystical kingdom of Afriyieland, where the elves and fairies gambol in an eternal rainbow under Adam's saintly rule. Others suspect that, without realising it, he is being run by undercover Cameron agents who have infiltrated what we will dignify as his "camp," encouraging him to cement the PM's position with a series of wondrously mistimed and misjudged attacks. If people wish to be obtuse, that is their privilege. The self-evident truth is that no one as dazzlingly clever as Adam, whose Question Time performance on Thursday night may have been the finest since Carol Vorderman's legendary tour de force, could have failed to understand that his amendment, while magnifique, was not le guerre. Yet like the Light Brigade, although fully aware in advance of the outcome, on and on he charged into the valley of death. If heroic self-sacrifice and the Westminster politician have never been the lustiest of bedfellows, they have lately made the George & Mildred of giant pandas look like a pair of rutting teenagers. In Adam Afriyie's active embrace of failure for the salvation of the party he loves, our faith in the archaic notion of politics as a chivalrous endeavour is restored. If his metaphorical middle name is Altruist, this is one triple A that no credit rating agency will ever downgrade. He is Captain Oates hobbling out of the tent to his icy grave in the hope that his friends might survive to reach base camp. He is Rick Blaine, another paradigm of sheer gallantry disguised as cynical self-interest, forcing Ilsa Lund on to the plane with Victor Laszlo at the end of Casablanca, throwing away his one shot at happiness for the fight against Nazism. It would be misleading to suggest that, in terms of being a serious player, Adam Afriyie may be gone some time. He was never there in the first place. But a man of such lustrous talents could have been a contender. Instead, he cultivated the false image of a brazen exhibitionist with the political antennae of a Tibetan mountain yak on Ritalin to unite every wing of the Conservative Party, from Kenneth Clarke at one end to Jacob Rees-Mogg at the other, on Europe. If David Cameron has the good grace to reciprocate the loyalty, this could, if only in secret, be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.