This week marks David Cameron’s last European Council as Prime Minister before the General Election and let’s hope he avoids one last blunder. It is easy to forget, given the endless Tory arguments on Europe over the past five years, that in opposition David Cameron’s ambition was for the Conservative Party to “stop banging on about Europe”. This summarises Cameron’s position well – he is simply not interested and sees the EU purely as a party management issue. If the issue of Europe is quiet then it’s a good bet that Tory backbenchers will be too.

But this abdication of leadership has caused repeated humiliations for the Prime Minister and allowed the ranks of Tory backbenchers to drive the agenda, leaving their leader looking weak, lacking in ideas and clueless.

Constantly bullied from the back benches, Cameron has time and again stirred from his self-imposed slumber, woken up too late and then mistakenly “taken a stand” before being humiliated. Famously he “vetoed” a new EU treaty in December 2011 but the result was not the triumph he portrayed – the rest of the EU went ahead anyway and concluded the treaty without the UK, leaving a legacy of bitterness in its wake and representing a low point in British diplomacy.

One of Cameron’s first pledges as Conservative leader was to placate Tory eurosceptics by leaving the centrist EPP group in the European Parliament, the group that includes Angela Merkel and several other powerful leaders across the continent. This cost him powerful allies. There is no better example than last year when he tried to veto Jean-Claude Juncker as President of the European Commission. He was humiliated as centre-right leaders abandoned him to support Juncker. Had the Tories still been in the EPP, they could have stopped it but the same lack of strategy and engagement came back to haunt him. In the process he has undermined British influence in Europe and jeopardised the UK’s membership of the EU, our largest trading partner.

This loss of influence was once again highlighted when Angela Merkel and Francois Hollande were attempting to broker a peace deal in Minsk over Ukraine. David Cameron was nowhere to be seen. The UK’s lack of influence over key events could not have been more starkly exposed. Why would France and Germany take the UK seriously when all they see from the Prime Minister is that he’s putting British membership at risk? This trumps all other strategic objectives, even the threat of Russia, as shown when Philip Hammond described discussions with Hungary’s pro-Putin leader, Victor Orban, as a “meeting of minds”. In the same week that Merkel and Hollande were negotiating for peace in Ukraine, Hammond’s priority was a visit to Malta discuss the Tory renegotiation agenda.

Liberal Democrats are clear that the UK should be showing leadership in Europe. Only as a committed member of the EU can we build the alliances needed to reform Europe. Only by working together with other European countries can we overcome the scourges of cross-border crime, climate change and economic instability. It’s time for a change, the British people deserve more than Cameron’s weak leadership.

* Tim Farron is Liberal Democrat Spokesperson on Refugees and MP for Westmorland and Lonsdale.