As Al says, The Daily Mail cheered the news but ignoring the Grauniad my worry is the FT booed the news.

This is about protecting the City of London although it's arguable that in the long term Cameron's petulance will backfire spectacularly. In fact, none of the noises coming out of the ivory towers of the City are particularly impressed with his somewhat puerile machinations during the negotiations.

There are lessons here, but not ones that Tory empiricists will ever have the wit to see. After the war Germany was essentially demilitarised and it's ability to produce weapons, ships etc was diminished along with it's industrial capacity for supporting those industries . . . until the Allies realised that Germany was needed for Europe to recover from the devastation of WWII, so allowed re-industrialisation. With all that effort plied into creating an economic base (at least in the Allied zone) and no need to support a huge military it was inevitable that in the long run this would work to Germany's advantage.

The fate of Europe has long been tied to the fortunes of Germany, like it or not. Europe is our biggest trading partner, our ties to Europe go deep indeed and not even the sad fools hankering for the days of empire can ever break those ties, and they won't.

Lessons can be learned: Stop spending on military white elephants like Trident and aircraft carries we can apparently live without for a couple of decades and spend the money where it's needed; on the NHS, economic recovery and creating jobs for the million disenfranchised youth.

You have to be in it to win it and whilst this sort of gung-ho isolationism appeals to those dullards and backward-looking boors that make up the core tory vote the real world demands a more pragmatic approach to the problem, and had Cameron not been so cowed by a clique of Monday Club backbench cretins then we might be in a better position.

Cameron is way out of his depth in government and this embarrassment only goes highlight his inadequacies when dealing with the big players (even Sarkozy looks like an intellectual giant next to Cameron). That said, when you're in the company of such total dunderheads like Gideon, Pickles and Gove he must look like a mental giant to those doltish party wonks around him, relatively speaking.