Former foreign secretary Douglas Hurd anticipated a dangerous future of UK isolation caused by “poisonous” internal divisions over the EU and advocated a policy of diplomatic “polygamy”, government documents from a quarter of a century ago reveal.

In a prescient, strategic paper released to the National Archives in Kew, Hurd warned that British attitudes towards the continent were tipping “over into xenophobia” at a time when international alliances were becoming ever more crucial.

But even the prime minister of the day, John Major, a convinced Europhile, vented his exasperation in private at the byzantine politics of the European Union, the files show, confessing on one occasion that he was “sick and tired of playing by the rules”.

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Hurd’s analysis was delivered to a high-powered private seminar at Chequers on 2 September 1994, in the presence of Major, the defence secretary Malcolm Rifkind and select senior officials.

As the UK agonises over Brexit, Hurd’s prophetic warnings will reverberate forcefully. The immediate international challenges in 1994 were civil war in the former Yugoslavia and mass slaughter in Rwanda. “The world has undergone a seismic change,” his confidential address began. “There is now one superpower but it is unwilling to impose solutions on disorder.”

Britain, “as a medium-sized power”, Hurd said, should best “pursue our interests through multilateral organisations, buttressed by selected bilateral alliances. The European Union is the most important.”

The UK’s three main partners, he said, are “the United States, Germany and France, for each of whom we are in danger of ranking third”.

He continued: “The main area of confusion in our foreign policy is Europe. Our public opinion is doubtful, most of our media hostile. The uncertainty over what we want weakens our ability to achieve our goals and make others hesitant to ally with us. We are seen as reluctant participants. This impression spreads outwards and weakens us in other areas too, eg with the United States.”

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Hurd was confident that the UK was on the winning side of the argument in the EU debate between “old-fashioned centralisers” and wanting “a wider, more flexible Europe”. That part of his prediction may have proved somewhat too optimistic. The EU, though, he acknowledged, faced growing threats from drugs, crime and immigration.

Hurd said: “Meanwhile, debate in the UK remains poisonous and we are weakened as a country by it. It tips over into xenophobia, especially in the press, and this is what Europeans and others notice. The political parties are divided, ours more seriously than Labour. We are unable to give a lead to popular thinking. As a result we seem continuously bad-tempered and on the defensive.”

Summing up, the foreign secretary concluded: “The world and interests in it are too complex for us to rely on a single partner. We need to practice polygamy. On each issue, we must first have total clarity on our national interests and then seek alliances with those who share our conclusions.”

After reading his foreign secretary’s speech, Major recorded in a handwritten note: “Mr Hurd’s paper is v.good. I agree with every word.”

Evidence of Major’s frustration at EU negotiations emerges from notes he made in the margins of a “look-ahead” file containing summaries of forthcoming events in the EU.

A letter in early 1995 about the French presidency of the Council of the EU explained there were demands for financial support in the Mediterranean and that the UK was resisting an EU data protection directive. On the briefing, a clearly irritated prime minister wrote: “Plenty of problems here. Why not block help for the Med if they impose the DP directive? I’m sick and tired of playing by the rules.”

Christopher Meyer, Major’s press secretary, produced a detailed “rolling database of controversial EU issues” so that the government could avoid being ambushed by the media or Eurosceptic backbenchers.

One item highlighted was an EU banana management committee that was considering quality standards. “Potential for another press field day on ‘bendy bananas’ etc,” Meyer observed, “but new legislation not expected in near future”. That was a reference to the 1994 controversy based on misleading reports that Brussels was planning to ban curved bananas.

A few months later, in April 1995, on another look-ahead circular, the prime minister scribbled: “Oh, God. It goes on and on. I’m getting pretty sick of this.” On a later report, discussing the Spanish presidency of the council, he wrote: “Please refer re metrication. Potential trouble.”

The threat of enforced metrication caused anxiety in No 10. In one letter to a colleague, Major declared: “This [EU] directive should not be enabled to confuse the elderly, irritate the population and damage the government.” On another metrication report, he noted: “Heaven help us. What a mess.”

Margaret Thatcher before him experienced even greater misgivings, the files reveal. She fought a rearguard action to preserve imperial measurement units. At the start of her premiership in 1979, she was telling officials: “I trust there will be no more compulsory metrication.”

Pressed by Lord Young in 1987 to consider an EU deadline on metrication, Thatcher wrote: “We can’t phase out imperial units – there would be an enormous row. Media and parliament would be united against a change.” The implementation date repeatedly slipped, leaving her unfortunate successor to confront the problem.