David Cameron finds his spine

It’s not enough. He still needs to give the British people their promised referendum on the Fourth Reich. But it is a start:

After a marathon meeting that started at dinner time on Thursday evening and finished at 6am on Friday, eurozone member states agreed to create an intergovernmental treaty to forge stricter budgetary controls for the group’s member states. Britain has opted to remain out of the treaty.

“I said before coming to Brussels, that if I could not get adequate safeguards for Britain in a new European treaty, then I would not agree to it,” David Cameron said.

“What is on offer is not in Britain’s interest, so I didn’t agree to it. Let me explain why this matters, of course we want the eurozone countries to come together and to solve their problems, but we should only allow that to open inside the European Union treaties, if there are proper protections for the single market and for other British key interests. Without those safeguards it is better not to have a treaty, but to have those countries make their arrangements separately. That is now what is going to happen.”

Frankly, I am astonished. I assumed Cameron was going to sell Britain out, as Thatcher, Major, Blair, and Brown all did before him. It doesn’t mean he won’t eventually do so, but then again, Britain has always been extraordinarily tardy about recognizing continental threats to its existence. This is a good sign, as it represents the first material cracks that will eventually break apart the third great attempt to subjugate Europe under an unaccountable and authoritarian regime.

Britain has no more to fear from being out of the European Union than it had from its refusal to join Napoleon’s Greater France or Hitler’s Greater Germany. David Cameron would do well to reflect upon which historical British leaders are revered today, the Wellingtons and Churchills or the Chamberlains and Blairs.