The accidental Europhile

BY CONTINENTAL and even recent British standards David Cameron has long had a Eurosceptic bent. In 2013 this outlook was combined with a growing anti-EU clamour in the Conservative Party, leading him to promise a grand “new settlement” that would put Britons’ Euro-cavils to rest. Three years later, on February 2nd, after an election victory and several months spent bustling about Europe, Mr Cameron sealed a draft offer with the European Council (see ). In a speech the next day he declared it a triumph. The press and Eurosceptic MPs, on the other hand, branded it a joke (“The great delusion!” bellowed one headline). Who is right?Both, to some extent. The deal, it is true, was more of a throat-clearing exercise than a roar of reinvention. Mr Cameron did not fulfil his ambition to overturn Europractice on immigration limits, treaty changes and repatriated powers. His “emergency brake” on migration is a graduated restriction of newcomers’ benefits; the “red card” that lets national parliaments block EU decisions will have little effect, because the threshold to do so is high. Yet the prime minister has won some valuable, if mostly symbolic, concessions to the British vision of a plural, open and liberal union. Pledges to cut bureaucracy, respect currencies other than the euro and let members opt out of “ever closer union” are airy but welcome. Non-euro-zone economies can assert their interests, thanks to a mechanism that delays an agreement if they fear being strong-armed by Europe’s core.