That is the title of the Booker column this week, the sub-editor adding the strap on the online version: "The real drama of the latest EU summit was not what happened, but what didn't happen".
What didn't happen, Booker explains, was the one thing which had any possibility of dragging the EU out of its mess – the incredibly high-risk strategy of going for a new treaty, finally completing the political union that always was necessary for the euro to survive.
Booker is the only commentator in the legacy media to have made such a point, basing his piece on my work and putting himself out on a limb.
For myself, I have been wondering if I imagined the whole thing, or somehow got it wrong, misunderstanding the signs. Thus, I have been back through my own posts, looking at the reports on which I based my case that a new treaty was in the offing.
I suppose it would appeal to his vanity if I marked him down as starting the rush towards a treaty that was only aborted a few days ago. Sadly for him though, Robert Peston will never know, as the likes of the Great Man would never think of reaching down to read a lowly independent blog.
Neverthless, it was his programme, which I reviewed on 17 May, which "revealed" that the single currency was a political project, then calling on Gerhard Schröder to tell us that, in order to make EMU work, political union was required.
"The crisis makes at least one thing obvious and that is we need more of Europe, we need the political union as the only way to save the stability of the euro", Schröder said.
Looking further back, you might prefer to take the start of the treaty rush from the December European Council when the "colleagues" went for a new treaty, only to have it blocked by David Cameron and his fabled "veto" that never was.
The mood music at the time, though, was for a modest treaty to make limited changes in the rules to facilitate certain budgetary controls. There was no hint of anything more ambitious. Perhaps though, it was a realisation that the "fiscal pact" which emerged was simply not going to do the job, and that a grand gesture was needed, that set us off on the current path.
However, even on 14 May, Aditya Chakrabortty in The Guardian was reminding us that Angela Merkel had said that, if the euro fails, Europe fails. But while it is still alive, said Chakrabortty, the euro must be counted a failure. Because the single currency was always about a political project as well as a printing press, and faced with their first major crisis, eurozone politicians didn't even try to combine the two.
So it was that, only a few days later, that the treaty meme began to surface. At first it was low key – just a few words in the Peston programme – but that very same day Wolfgang Schäuble, German finance minister, told us that "must learn from its sovereign debt crisis by forging a more closely integrated financial policy". He added: "I would be for the further development of the European Commission into a government".
It has to be said, though, that Schäuble's stance was not particularly new. On 19 September 2011, Spiegel had reported that he and influential politicians within the CDU/CSU parliamentary leadership had been developing the next major integration step for some time. "The lesson to be learned from the crisis is that we need more of Europe, not less," said CDU politician Peter Altmaier, a close ally of Merkel.
Schäuble then had wanted to amend the European Treaties to promote greater integration among all 27 countries in the EU, and not just the 17 eurozone members. Otherwise, he said, an organisation competing with the commission will develop without sufficient democratic control.
Now, the Sunday Times must have picked up something of this for, on 20 May, it was talking openly of a "United States of Europe", declaring that the best solution to the euro crisis was an orderly Greek exit, radical reform and a federal Europe.
The same edition of the paper had Niall Ferguson in full spate, asserting that the currency would survive and the euro-crisis would leave Berlin heading a federal Europe.
Shortly afterwards, on 22 May, we saw Germany's former deputy finance minister and German ECB board member, Jörg Asmussen, join the fray. He called for a politically integrated eurozone that would split the EU of 27 in two, with the hard core joined in a "banking union, fiscal union, and political union". This was a United States of Europe in all but name, but only for the hard core.
The day following we were seeing Merkel under attack for resisting eurobonds – effectively the mutualisation of debt, with Germany expected to underwrite the debts of all the eurozone states.
Barely noticed was the commission's view that "many of the implications [of eurobonds] went well beyond the technical domain and involved issues relating to national sovereignty and the process of economic and political integration". Eurobonds would require the full and final degree of economic and political integration.
This was the day, 23 May, that the "colleagues" held their informal dinner in Brussels under the aegis of the European Council, with the issue of an anodyne statement – or so we thought – by Van Rompuy at the end. But tucked away in the statement was this brief passage:
Our discussion also demonstrated that we need to take Economic Monetary Union to a new stage. There was general consensus that we need to strengthen the economic union to make it commensurate with the monetary union. I will report in June, in close cooperation with the President of the Commission, the President of the Euro Group and the President of the European Central Bank, on the main building blocks and on a working method to achieve this objective.
With pressure still on Germany to agree to eurobonds, Nick Clegg was off to Berlin on 25 May to give Merkel what for, but once he arrived, he was strangely silent. And by then, we were dismissing the European Council dinner as coup de theatre, with its engineered spat to help Hollande with his electioneering.
Now the crisis in Spain started to flare up to supernova level with reports on the last day of the month of fear gripping the market. Greece was bad enough but this was a "total emergency". Something had to be done.
Pointing the way was ECB President Mario Draghi addressing the EU parliament. He told MEPs "to clarify their vision for the single currency quickly or risk disaster", warning that the central bank could not fill the policy vacuum. Then we got EU commissioner Olli Rehn, warning that "the eurozone could disintegrate without stronger crisis-fighting measures and tough fiscal discipline".
On the edges, Italy's Mario Monti was saying that his country was threatened by "huge possibilities of contagion", even as the Irish referendum was being held. Their "yes" vote gave a few hours of relief but the next day Robert Zoellick, then head of the World Bank until the end of the month, was warning that financial markets faced a rerun of the Great Panic of 2008.
Crisis fatigue was setting in by then, and the English media was obsessed with Jubilee celebrations. But, on Sunday 3 June, Booker was observing that the "beneficial crisis" was getting out of hand, with a somewhat prescient forecast that the "colleagues" were not going to get their new powers, their "eurobonds" or their fiscal union.
But on that day, it looked very different. Courtesy of Welt online, we were to learn the true meaning of the Van Rompuy statement at the dinner of the 23 May. Merkel was trying to break free from the perpetual cycle of short-term crisis management, and "to think about how we move forward over the next five to ten years".
In the offing, therefore, was a secret "master plan" for the future of the EU, being hatched up by Van Rompuy, Barroso, Euro Group President Jean-Claude Juncker and the head of the ECB, Mario Draghi.
The "quartet" had been given its instructions at the meeting on the 23rd and the plan was set to be unveiled at the European Council at the end of June. It was expected to be "a revolutionary document".
Under conditions of great secrecy, four areas were being looked at: structural reforms, the banking union, a fiscal union and political union. And, whatever the actual content, all parties were agreed that a major treaty was needed.
Monday 24 June had Ambrose Evans-Pritchard report that Spanish premier Mariano Rajoy was calling for an EU "fiscal authority" and the use of the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) to recapitalise banks. Ambrose also picked up the "master plan" for the future of the EU.
Reuters followed through, also reporting on the "master plan", with a story headed: "Europe mulls major step toward 'fiscal union'". The previous June, it said, Jean-Claude Trichet – then still ECB president – had been arguing for "giving euro area authorities a much deeper and authoritative say" in the formation of economic policies.
Said the Reuters authors Noah Barkin and Daniel Flynn, "the idea seemed fanciful, a distant dream that would take years or even decades to realise, if it ever came to be". And they are not wrong. At the time it seemed yet another ritual call for "more Europe" from an ardent integrationist, for which there seemed little appetite.
One year later, Germany was pushing its partners for precisely the kind of giant leap forward in fiscal integration that the now-departed European Central Bank president had in mind. Erik Neilsen, chief economist at Unicredit then told us, "The world is not coming to an end; rather, it feels as if we are on the doorstep to another major European integration move".
By the 5 June, even the Guardian was picking this up, telling us that the EU was "edging towards a controversial new blueprint for a federalised eurozone".
With every passing hour, the idea that we were in for another treaty round seemed to be firming up, even to the extent that it was being played down by the commission. Contradicting Welt, spokeswoman, Pia Ahrenkilde-Hansen said: "There is no master plan".
The notion, we were told, was also rubbished in Berlin – but not ruled out. "We are talking about several years and certainly not a solution that we are thinking about in the current problematic situation," said Merkel's spokesman. Elsewhere, though, Schäuble was calling for a "proper fiscal union". Before there was any discussion of debt policy, he said, a new level of integration was necessary.
Barroso was in Berlin then, hearing Merkel encourage EU oversight of banking, paving the way to a more centralised oversight of the European financial sector. The commission president called for an economic union.
The Financial Times on the anniversary of D-Day warned that the flames were licking closer to the eurozone's combustible core. It is no longer, the paper said, just the smaller countries that were in peril, but two of the currency bloc's largest members – Spain and Italy. Spain in particular faced a banking crisis that could – if unresolved – set off a full-blown banking panic around Europe's periphery.
In response, the commission was to propose "far-reaching powers" for regulators to deal with failing banks. The proposal published that day in a 156-page draft set out supervisory powers to "bail in" or force losses onto bondholders of a failing bank.
The idea was to keep taxpayers off the hook and to forge closer links between national back-up funds to wind up cross-border lenders. Although this move was said to be "a step towards the banking union" which the ECB hasd "demanded" to secure the euro's future – nothing was likely to take effect 2014.
That, said Reuters, was a "baby step" - too late for Spain, which could be forced to seek a Greek-style bailout if it could not refinance its indebted lenders. Meanwhile, the Daily Mail had noticed something amiss and was complaining: "Leaders plotting EU superstate: 'Fiscal union' looms … with the Germans in charge".
Mariano Rajoy, under "mounting international pressure", warned that Europe's single currency would unravel unless its leaders decided within weeks to centralise budget and tax policies in the eurozone and agreed on a strategy to pool responsibility for failing banks. Although not said explicitly, this could not be done without a new treaty.
That day, 7 June, Merkel was on television telling the world, "We need more Europe". She supported a "two-speed Europe", with the "core group" in the eurozone pressing ahead with deeper integration.
"We need more Europe, we need not only a monetary union, but we also need a so-called fiscal union, in other words more joint budget policy". She added: "And we need most of all a political union, that means we need to gradually give competencies to Europe and give Europe control".
The next day had Cameron and Merkel meeting, with the pair agreeing that the EU's fiscal pact was not a sufficient step in itself to resolve the crippling eurozone debt crisis. Cameron was heard to say: "I have no doubt that the single currency countries will want to seek greater integration. That is clearly going to happen over the coming months and years".
Back home, like the Mail before it, the Daily Express was complaining of "Germany's relentless march towards creating a European superstate", reporting that: "Fury erupted after German Chancellor Angela Merkel yesterday cranked up her plans for political union".
With intervention in passing from Obama, Jörg Asmussen was in Riga outlining what "Europe" needed to do:
We need a more integrated monetary union, because the monetary area that we have now is incomplete. And we have to complement it in a way to make it more stable. One point is a fiscal union. The second one is a financial market union with three key elements: A resolution regime; second element, a deposit guarantee insurance; and third, we need a centralised supervision for the large 25 banks in Europe.
Asmussen then said: "We need a democratically legitimised political union", adding: "We need to start this speedily".
George Osborne made an appearance on 12 June asserting that further "pooling of sovereignty" must be limited to the countries of the eurozone, acknowledging that "we are approaching a moment of truth for the eurozone". The "moment of truth", the Sunday Telegraph said, "is actually a very profound existential crisis".
Hollande was now on track to a record-breaking win in the French parliament, while europhile Wolfgang Münchau in the Financial Times declared that, if the "colleagues" fudged the march to the banking union and then a wider fiscal and political union, he too "would conclude that it is time to prepare for the end of the eurozone".
It was now 12 June and Sabine Lautenschläger, vice-president of the Bundesbank, declared that a banking union could only be implemented in tandem with fiscal union, otherwise it would be tantamount to a back-door pooling of sovereign debt.
"In a banking union, a crisis in one country's banking system may require the use of taxpayer money from other countries," said the Bundesbank vice president. "Whoever is footing the bill must also have a right of control, particularly when it comes to the large sums that are seen in banking crises".
The upshot was that, if the "colleagues" wanted their banking union, they were going to have to provide cover for it with a full-blown treaty. Then, Merkel (or her replacement) was going to have to go for a change in the German constitution.
It was now the 13 June and Barroso was addressing MEPs in the EU parliament in Strasbourg, telling the MEPs: "We are now in a defining moment for European integration and the European Union". Further integration of the eurozone was "indispensable", he said, adding: "I am not sure whether the urgency of this is fully understood in all the capitals".
Guy Verhofstadt, leader of the liberal group ALDE, responded by telling the commission president: "the problem is not Europe - the problem is not enough Europe! … Federal Europe is the solution".
Coming through now was the idea that any mutualisation of debt would apply only to new debt – which would be very strictly controlled. Existing debt would be reformulated as "redemption bonds" and paid back over a fix period, at a low interest rate, the debt itself not appearing on the balance sheets.
In a speech to parliament in Berlin, an exasperated Merkel bluntly told the rest of Europe to get real about the crisis. She dismissed calls for Berlin to share responsibility for other euro countries' debt, and rejected charges that Germany was not doing enough to stabilise the euro.
"Germany's strength is not unlimited," she warned. "The way out of the crisis in the eurozone can only be successful if all countries are capable of recognising the reality and realistically assessing their strengths".
On the 16 June with the repeat election in Greece imminent, and all eyes on Athens, Barroso declared that the euro would not be allowed to fail and the European Union project was "irreversible".
And, as the Greek election went its weary way, the Telegraph leaked part of the roadmap, pointing to a banking union, pooling debt via some kind of eurobonds and political union via EU treaty change over the next 10 years.
Hollande won his second round of the parliamentary elections, and the Greeks got a government. Now the decks were clear for serious EU politics. Rajoy described the news from Athens as "good news for Greece, very good news for the European Union, for the euro and also for Spain". I am totally convinced, he said, "that this strengthens the euro. The euro project is irreversible and we must continue to make progress on it".
Now we can link up with the Booker piece as he recalls that the "Future Group" of ten EU foreign ministers decided that the only way to solve the mortal crisis threatening to bring down the euro was another giant leap forward in European integration.
The European Commission had to be turned into "a real government". There should be a new bicameral parliament, with the existing EU Parliament given new powers as its lower house, and the Council of Ministers as its upper house, or Senate. At the head of it all should be a single President of Europe, elected by voters across the EU.
Tellingly, says Booker, this echoed almost exactly what Jacques Delors proposed back in 1989 when the integrationist tide was at its full. As Thatcher put it on a famous occasion, Delors wanted "the European Parliament to be the democratic body", "the Commission to be the executive" and "the Council of Ministers to be the Senate". It was this triple proposal that prompted Thatcher's immortal reply on 30 October, 1990: "No. No. No".
This time, though, it was Merkel who was saying, "nein, non, no!", but only to a proposal that there should be eurobonds and the mutualisation of debt that went with them, without greater controls over eurozone finances.
She was not ill-disposed to the idea of further integration, telling the ARD "Morning Magazine" programme on 21 June that she wanted to give "more power and drive" to Europe at the European Council in late June. "We need not only a monetary union, but we also need a so-called fiscal union … And we need above all a political union", she said.
Ambrose the next day used a top Italian official to tell us: "Monti is desperate. Reform fatigue has breached breaking point", and: "There is a feeling here that the euro is basically dead already. Unless Germany offers a roadmap out of this crisis, Monti is not going to be able to hold it together much longer".
That brought us to the four power meeting where Monti told us how vital the European Council meeting was, then in one week's time.
The Council was "expected to tackle long-term plans for closer fiscal and banking union" in a bid to strengthen the euro's foundations. Although "political union" was not mentioned, it could easily be inferred that this was high up the list.
By the Sunday before the meeting, AFP was calling it "a mother-of-all-summits". What Europe needed, said Rompuy, was "not only to make recommendations and then anyone can do what he wants, but to make them mandatory". There was no equivocation here. The Council president was talking about a new phase of European integration, with the meeting set to discuss what integration steps can be tackled.
That weekend, Schäuble was interviewed at length by Spiegel. Totally confident of himself, he declared: "the more people see what's at stake, the more they are willing to draw the right consequences". And those consequences are: "We need more and not less Europe".
Tuesday, 26 June, just before the European Council, there was a worrying development. A "poisonous struggle" had been festering between Berlin and Karlsruhe. Merkel had jokingly compared Andreas Voßkuhle, the youngest ever president of the Federal Constitutional Court, with a dangerous scorpion – along with the other fifteen members. And nobody was laughing.
Handelsblatt remarked that, in order to save the euro, democracy was being corrupted. Barroso's ambitions were beginning to attract hostility from politicians in Germany, while the idea of a referendum for the German people was taking root.
Despite that, Merkel said that there was far too much talk on possible ways to share debt, and too little on improving controls and structural measures – almost exactly what Jens Weidmann, the Federal Reserve Chairman, was saying. He too rejected the idea of a speedy introduction of a banking union, without a "profound reform of the euro area, including a fiscal union".
Schäuble weighed in, affirming that there should be a referendum, with Schröder intervening again, declaring that "Europe needs a bold reform". To save the EU, he said, there must be a European government - even at the expense of the nation state.
That day, the "quartet" produced their report. It had been stripped of any proposals for introducing eurobonds and there was no commitment on an immediate treaty. Instead, it offered merely a "coherent and complete architecture" that will have to be put in place "over the next decade". The proposals will, we were told, "require a lot of further work, including possible changes to the EU treaties at some point in time".
With panic signals flying, the next day, and allusions to the Titanic being made, Merkel was said to have told her coalition MPs that she was against the idea of eurobonds, and the pooling of debt, "for as long as I live".
In fact, what she had condemned was the "current proposal" of eurobonds without additional [treaty] controls. "Eurobonds are the wrong way", she later said, qualifying this by adding: "I am against putting the pooling first". "Too much is being spoken about joint liability - and not enough on better controls". Berlin was making European integration a condition of agreeing to joint liability.
"Merkel reiterates opposition to euro bonds", Handelsblatt reported, but added the all-important qualification: "but not always". Merkel wants deeper economic integration first. To force eurobonds now, "would be the wrong lesson from the past". Crucially, though, "now" was not forever.
Merkel had a legal argument: they were incompatible with the Basic Law and the EU Treaty in its current form. But bonds were "not yet categorically excluded for all days". She wanted to know whether her conditions would first be met. "We need more rights of intervention, when fiscal rules are violated", she said.
But despite all this, the next day - last Thursday - the brave talk of a "new Europe" and political union wasn't even on the table at the European Coucnil. To bring the vision about would have required a major new treaty, taking the best part of two years, and up to a dozen national referendums (several of which would probably have been lost), before it could have been ratified. That was probably the breaking point.
When it came to the test as to whether Europe was to take that further leap forward to the goal Delors and Jean Monnet dreamt of, today's politicians, led by presidents Van Rompuy and Barroso, just flunked it.
The result, concludes Booker, was not a victory for anyone – it was a defeat for everyone. The great European project had put itself in the predicament the battleship Bismarck faced in 1941 – its steering gear disabled, forced to limp round in circles until it met an inevitable doom.
Gazing into the bottomless pit of debt, the EU's leaders can neither move forward into the future nor escape from the prison they have made for themselves by their errors of the past. They must hang there in the wind, until the inexorable logic of the markets brings them to a real crunch point, more fateful for all our futures than anything they have yet dared imagine.
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