BRITAIN AND THE E.U.

What is David Cameron up to? I know that he has some bolshy backbenchers, who have cornered him into promising an in-out referendum on Britain's membership of the E.U. However, opposing Jean-Claude Juncker to be the next President of the Commission doesn't seem to me to make it more likely either that he can renegotiate Britain's relationship or win that post-negotiation referendum. In particular, in forcing a vote on the matter for the first time in the E.U.'s history, a vote which he lost 26-2 (the only support came from Hungary), he simply managed to hack everyone else off. Other European leaders who were not enthusiastic about Mr. Juncker (Holland and Sweden certainly, Germany maybe) ended up supporting him, when they could see that a protest would not succeed. Mr. Cameron fought on to the bitter end.

He of course is saying that he is fighting for a principle, and that it doesn't matter being defeated, provided that one is right. The problem is that this is just another version of the "everybody else in Europe is stupid, we are the only ones that are sensible" argument that has long bedevilled Britain's relationship with the E.U. People who are called stupid are unlikely to give lollipops to the people who call them stupid.

Britain seems to be sleepwalking towards an E.U. exit. That would be a catastrophe, in my view. But perhaps it needs a catastrophe for the Brits to work out that they no longer run the world in the way they used to.

Walter Blotscher