His party started to intervene. In parliament MPs grew increasingly restless, particularly the impressive new intake that tends to be solidly eurosceptical. The Tory leader seemed to have been captured by the mandarinate and the integrationist UK Permanent Representation to the EU in Brussels. Many Tory MPs despaired of his diplomatic efforts. Although their demands were inchoate, and they had not coalesced around future potential leaders, they were proving very difficult for party managers to control. The rebellion of 81 Tory MPs calling for a referendum on Europe was the biggest manifestation yet of his party's unhappiness.

The prime minister's key adviser and closest friend in politics, Steve Hilton, had also become exasperated with Cameron's vacillations and appalled by the continued impositions from Brussels that hamper competitiveness and recovery. Late last summer the chancellor and the prime minister had even decided that in order to save the single currency they had, quite suddenly, been converted to fiscal union for the eurozone, although they didn't look as though they really believed it. They then said they thought such a move would trigger a renegotiation with the Eurozone that might offer the possibility of a repatriation of powers to Britain. Next they were less sure about renegotiation; finally, they thought definitely not, as they didn't want to cause a fuss.

But then Cameron came under great pressure in the days leading up to the December summit. Cabinet ministers — such as welfare secretary Iain Duncan Smith and Northern Ireland secretary Owen Paterson — had worked out that the only language Cameron understood was that of force. They organised with the rebel MPs, and impressed on Cameron that he had to find a way out of agreeing to a new treaty of the 27 members of the EU. If Cameron had defied his party it would have meant full-scale mutiny and irresistible demands for a referendum. Through a combination of pressure and Cameron's mild-euroscepticism hardening into conviction, the prime ministerial resolve was strengthened.

Events in the eurozone crisis were also making it increasingly difficult to maintain the fiction on which British policy had long been based. A new and closely integrated entity, one that threatens to eclipse and supersede the existing European Union of 27, is being created. It will presumably mean attempts to create a European Treasury and a eurozone bloc that can permanently outvote Britain. What will its relationship be with the Commission? Whatever they succeed in creating — and there is a strong chance they will blow up the entire European economy in the attempt — the nature and construction of the EU is changing dramatically before our eyes. Led by Germany and France, a large number of countries want to go where the UK has little or no inclination to follow.