Clearly David Cameron read Twigaview and went off to the all nighter in Brussells which followed the EU leaders non austerity dinner (banquet in normal parlance ) with a clear head and new vigour.
The hand wringing and whining to the tune of "we are marginalised" by the likes of Labour and the twittering David Owen this morning tell us that the prime Minister has done the right thing. Only on Wednesday were Labour warning against weakness in the face of Euro adversity and here they are out to play again dancing to their inevitable flipside tune.
To many commentators, the UK's stance this morning has been all about simply protecting the financial services industry. That is not true and misses the point entirely.
Ever since the EU was established there has been a barely hidden Franco/German agenda of eventually politically uniting Europe under in effect their dominant leadership. Part of France's motivation, but not Germany's, has been the marginalisation of the politically disliked Britain. For most British the idea of an overarching European superstate reducing national parliaments to the equivalent of county councils has never been acceptable and is unlikely to be for a very long time. All parties have known this and as result the federal powers of the EU have only been introduced very slowly. Stealth has been key and the federalists have always been careful to ensure that has never been quite an important enough issue or proposed single power grab to justify throwing toys out of the pram at any particular moment.
France in particular seen the Euro crisis as a magnificent opportunity to significantly push the extension of EU powers forward. It is the potentially the biggest grab yet,- all in everyone's best interests of course to save the Euro. The UK has had the courage to say "Hey, - Not so fast" and said simply "No,- this isn't where we want to go". It's not that the Merko combine didn't know that. They just didn't believe he would finally stand firm amidst all their moralising about the collective good, this not being the time for discord etc. and declare his answer loudly. They would know that he was faced with all sorts of Foreign Office and other chaff about "loss of influence" and how dreadful that would be, the British Eurocrats wouldn't be invited to the cosiest lunches and dinners in Brussells and calculated that he would buckle. Sarkosy though probably wasn't fussed either way.
Sometimes it is necessary to cause a crisis so as to get a resolution. Cameron, alone amongst his peers has had the vision to see beyond the Euro crisis and the dangers of quick fix substantially changing the nature of the EU. In doing so he has moved a long way from being where we saw him yesterday as not giving the leadership needed to break through from a suffocating one sized fits all solution into the reality that a two tier or two type Europe is the best answer. Those twin but libnked organisations of the 1950s -"The Six" (EU) and "The Seven " (EFTA) look very much the solution for the 2010s. Far from being marginalised as the pundits will howl today, Britain could emerge much stronger as the leader of the more liberal free trade only group. The remainder could continue towards the superstate, though at a high risk of it failing much more disastrously not long hence. The EU core could not afford to put up trade barriers against the others as they need the reciprocal to in particular the UK's very open markets.
The British Prime Minister should therefore return home deserving a pleasant weekend. It's likely that his deluxe festive gift hampers from Europe are at this moment be being downgraded to boxes of crackers. If so he would do well to have them checked out before pulling.
Footnote: On reaching home Mr Cameron may well find Lib Dems on his doorstep. They are much more in favour of Peace in our Time solutions and love and brother/sisterhood in Europe . This could be a coalition problem. More of that later. Let's watch the falling dust first.
