EU Treaty Cameron was right, and about time he put England’s interests first

Cameron was right, and about time he put England’s interests first, now maybe he should think, and listen to his own MP’s and the people of England and pull England out of the EU

The EU costs English tax payers over £60 million pounds a week just for being a member, without the £100’s of millions a year it cost England’s taxpayers in EU bail outs and its member’s corruptions?

EU Treaty would only serve those with the euro such as the German’s and French more than its fellow euro partners how economic truths were hidden by 'blaming Britain'

It was the day they missed perhaps their last chance to save their tottering currency; the day they significantly reduced democracy, and locked in economic misery, for tens of millions of their people

It might even have been the day that the EU, as we have known it, ceased to exist. But for Europe’s leaders yesterday, all these unfortunate truths were at least partly concealed by making it the day for blaming Britain.

“We have a very good result,” said the president of the European Parliament, Jerzy Buzek. “Twenty-six versus one.” An agreement of all 27 EU members, said France’s Nicolas Sarkozy, was impossible “thanks to our British friends.” Maybe he was just tired – it was 5am – but as he ground out the words, the French president’s lip seemed to curl.

Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, told reporters: “I really don’t believe David Cameron was ever with us at the table.”

In what seemed, at times, like the anti-British summit, lower-ranking figures circulated through the halls, turning up the rhetoric in the search for a scapegoat. Cameron had been “clumsy in his manoeuvring,” said one senior EU diplomat. Guy Verhofstadt, the former prime minister of Belgium, was on hand to tell us that Britain was now “outside the economic policies of the EU.”

None of this is necessarily wrong. In the early hours of yesterday, by saying that he would not agree a treaty for closer eurozone “fiscal union” without safeguards for the City, Mr Cameron may indeed have brought Britain to a 50-year crossroads. But it is substantially beside the point.

British officials concede that for most of Thursday night, as the EU leaders’ “informal dinner” turned into intense negotiations about the euro fiscal pact, Mr Cameron, outside the euro, said relatively little, neither speaking nor being spoken to.

Not until 2.30am, six hours after the start of the dinner and long after the plates of cod and chocolate cake had been cleared, did the leaders still sat round the dining table hear the Prime Minister’s pitch.

They listened to him, though there is disagreement on how politely and for how long. British officials insisted that the discussions “always remained quite friendly,” but another source said Sarkozy delivered a “tongue-lashing.” The discussion was substantively over in about fifteen minutes, said one eurozone diplomat; longer, according to the British.

At just after 6am, a grim-looking Mr Cameron came to the press conference podium to announce his momentous decision. “We wish them well,” he said of his European partners, using the language of separation. Some of the British officials, a lifetime of EU engagement behind them, looked sick. And as the morning wore on, Britain’s allies steadily diminished, from five to two, to one and then to none.

But all this may well soon be overtaken by events. Asked if the euro was safe now, the prime minister of Poland, which holds the EU presidency, said: “I’m not sure.” Though Mrs Merkel called the agreement a “breakthrough,” even her own foreign minister said it was “not great.” The price of Italy’s sovereign debt went back up towards danger levels.

For the new, Britain-less treaty that the 26 other members agreed looks a lot like the “growth and stability pact” that they signed years ago, then flouted with abandon. And even if this one works, it will take time. There was little or nothing yesterday to tackle the pressing short-term crisis, of confidence in some EU states’ ability to pay their debt.

The “big bazooka” bailout fund that some had expected was nowhere to be seen. The European Central Bank signalled that it would stick rigidly to its rules about not becoming a lender of last resort. "It's not the grand bargain some people had been hoping for," said David Mackie, an economist at J.P. Morgan in London.

Blaming Britain helped divert attention from that, and from the fact that several other EU countries also worry about the path the summit chose, though more discreetly than Mr Cameron. If the fundamental problems remain unsolved, blaming Britain won’t work for very long.

Just outside the room where Mrs Merkel spoke was one of those conceptual EU sculptures. Perhaps appropriately, this one showed what appeared to be a pile of rubble with human body parts trapped in it. The rock-fall that is the euro crisis is no more solved than it was a week ago, and a lot of people could still be buried.