But persevere and there could even be a great prize for Cameron. Churchill famously said in 1946: "We are with Europe, but not of it. We are linked but not compromised. We are interested and associated but not absorbed." Churchill was no isolationist. He understood that Britain was part of the European family of nations, yet grasped that for reasons of history, culture and inclination it was ill-suited to submersion in a supra-national project of the kind our partners are hell-bent on creating.

If Cameron can build on what he did in Brussels, win back substantial powers, build better links with the increasingly prosperous world outside troubled Europe's borders and get close to that Churchill ideal, he will find himself ranked amongst the greats.