Sarkozy-Cameron spat: Britain risks exclusion

FRENCH PRESIDENT Nicholas Sarkozy and UK Prime Minister David Cameron clashed during the EU-27 summit, with the French president bluntly telling Cameron he had missed an opportunity to "shut up" and adding: "We are sick of you criticising us and telling us what to do. You say you hate the euro and now you want to interfere in our meetings." But the spat underlined the worrying prospect that Britain could be sidelined from decisions that will effect its future.
Excluding Britain
During two hours of bitter exchanges Sarkozy fought hard to get Cameron barred from upcoming euro crisis talks, says Bruno Waterfield in The Telegraph. "What Cameron fears is that the euro’s 17 governments will create a Franco-German dominated ‘caucus’ that could hijack the EU’s single market for its own ends."

Sarkozy may well be tired of being lectured by British politicians, says Sam Fleming in The Times. "But David Cameron is quite right when he says that the dithering and bickering over the euro crisis is having a chilling effect on Britain’s economy."

If the euro-induced tensions continue, the banks say they will lift interest rates. "There could hardly be a clearer demonstration of how deeply integrated Britain’s fortunes are with those of the hapless euro area."

No solutions
Things are getting worse, says Joe Weisenthal in Business Insider. Add the Cameron and Sarkozy row to the collapse of German-French relations, and the fact that everyone's turning on Italy and "you have all the makings of an extraordinarily depressing, dysfunctional currency union that really looks like it could collapse barring something remarkable".

Our PM must really have been getting Sarko’s goat to provoke the tirade that came his way, says Alistair Campbell on his blog. But while Cameron seems to do plenty of finger-pointing and blame-gaming, "he and his Chancellor have precious little to say by way of solutions".

Forget the referendum...
And now, fresh from being bawled out by Sarkozy, Cameron has returned to London to be bawled out by a significant proportion of his own party, blogs Peter Hoskin for The Spectator. And while the Tory leadership is certain to defeat the Eurosceptic motion, "it will not avoid being wounded in the process".

The Eurosceptics are missing something, says Europe editor, Gavin Hewitt on BBC News. Treaty change, which would be needed to more closely integrate the eurozone economies, "is now firmly on the agenda".

During his post-spat press conference, Cameron hinted that this would provide an opportunity to advance British interests. While he did not indicate whether this might involve repatriating powers, he was sending his restive back-benchers a message – "forget the referendum, there are other games in town". ·