Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg has issued a warning to the Tories to concentrate on fighting the "firestorm" in the eurozone rather than trying to re-negotiate Britain's membership of the European Union.
As David Cameron prepares to deliver a keynote speech in the new year setting out his vision of Britain's future in the EU, the Liberal Democrat leader said the UK should have the confidence to take the lead in Europe.
The Prime Minister is widely expected to demand a repatriation of powers from Brussels as the price of agreeing financial reform of the eurozone, with the promise of a referendum of the 2015 general election.
But in an interview with The Guardian, Mr Clegg insisted that talk of a referendum was premature and amounted to no more than "political shadow boxing".
"What we really should be doing is just focusing on the kind of economic firestorm at hand, working co-operatively to help them to put out the fire in the eurozone and to come out of this phase of economic emergency," he said.
Nick Clegg has urged the Tories to concentrate on the eurozone crisis
"I think to have a referendum, kind of about nothing very much in particular, when you're in the middle of an emergency repair job to your own economy and European economy, is putting the cart before the horse.
"It's an exercise of political shadow boxing to try and anticipate a process of which we're not one of the principal authors and then start now prescribing how we should react to it."
Mr Clegg said past prime ministers from Margaret Thatcher to Tony Blair had offered "extraordinary leadership" in the EU, and that Britain should once again put itself at the forefront of developments.
"At every point when there's been a fork in the road about whether Britain should retreat or lead, when we have led we have always surprised ourselves and others about how successfully we can lead," he said.
"It short changes us as a country to assume always that we cannot lead when all the evidence is, throughout our history, even if we're not in the centre of the action that's going on across the Channel, that we nonetheless can bring great leadership to bear."