There are no winners in the quarrel about the next head of the European Commission. Britain’s David Cameron is courting humiliation; Germany’s Angela Merkel is backing the wrong candidate for the wrong reasons; and the commission will get a president unequal to the task. As for the citizens who railed against the political elites in elections for the European Parliament, well, the shabby deal now taking shape promises vindication. Sometimes you really have to struggle to make the pro-European case.
Those searching for a theological message in the expected choice of Jean-Claude Juncker as president of the commission will be disappointed. Sure, the former Luxembourg prime minister is an old-fashioned federalist, but that is nothing to get excited about. The days when Jacques Delors could turn the commission into an engine of integration have long gone.
No, forget visions of Europe’s future. The argument has all been about competing national politics. And, put bluntly, the dynamics of the EU dictate that Ms Merkel’s politics trump Mr Cameron’s. If there has been a surprise, it is the ruthlessness with which the German chancellor has subordinated her oft-declared Europeanism to some pretty tawdry horse-trading designed to get herself out of a domestic fix.