Although the German press has been relatively quiet about the EU (multi-annual) budget, it is making up for lost time, with Spiegel dubbing Cameron "Mr No", then dismissing him in one short, pithy sentence: "He can only lose".

For all the torrent of verbiage that we are about to receive, it is unlikely that anything will be able to improve on that. Whichever way he plays it, Mr Cameron is faced with a lose-lose situation. The only thing he can influence is the precise manner of his losing, and the depth of his humiliation – and perhaps the timing, with the Council set to run until Sunday.

I guess that is what the arrogant fool Oborne was up to last night, working on the basis that if Cameron capitulated early and often, he could pretend that was the plan all along – that he was simply being "magnanimous".

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Which really does beg the question... what use is any veto if it can be overturned later by qualified majority voting?

What a stupid situation our idiocracy has got us into.

It's a facet of the joke non policy which the Conservatives have been pushing for years - "In Europe but not ruled by Europe", the hand is faster than the eye, and all that.

The problem is that pretending to be against it in its present form but reforming it from within - remaining constructively engaged - is running out of road. No one with any sense wants to be constructively engaged with a sinking ship. That fence the Tories have been sitting on for years must be getting very uncomfortable and it's looking as if there's a good chance they'll be impaled on it.

The bind that Cameron is in is that we can't get fully involved because we're not going to join the Euro, and he can't take the responsibility and face the risks of getting out. By "the risks" I'm thinking of all the factions that welcome EU jobs and pensions and the flood of legislation and backhanders. They'd welcome being on the periphery, being run by lunatics and the UK forking out billions.

Cameron's a tosser but I doubt that anyone else likely to have been PM at this time would be doing anything different from reading a script which was a variation on he theme. "Tough talking", "Tough decisions", "I have drawn a line in the sand", "I have in my hand a piece of paper".

I asked that several months back. every nation is in debt so that's one Hell of a shell game.