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Auch Simon Tilford, glaubt, dass Cameron die City unnötigerweise isoliert hat. »Gerade weil London von der Transaktionssteuer mehr betroffen gewesen wäre als alle anderen Finanzplätze, ist es unwahrscheinlich, dass Deutschland und Frankreich sie jemals durchgesetzt hätten«, sagt er.

"Diplomatically speaking, we're in a much poorer position because Britain is not in the room," said Hugo Brady, of the CER. "They were quite willing and quite happy to be the difficult partner so you could hide behind them in diplomatic negotiations ...

Tomas Valasek of the Centre for European Reform has written an excellent and gloomy analysis of the wider damage caused by David Cameron's botched negotiations. One point is that Britain's likely absence from European economic decision-making will tilt the balance towards French etatism. Another is that small countries will be eezed by big ones when decisions are made on an intergovernmental basis, rather than through EU institutions. Many from the EU-10 think that they are not welcome (at least from a French point of view) in the real core of Europe.

Charles Grant of the CER, suggests that France and Germany may decide to pursue deeper fiscal integration in the eurozone via a new treaty that would include current members and aspiring "pre-ins". "Although Europe is facing this new division between the euro countries and the non-euro countries, which is important, a large number of the central European countries should be on the integration side of that division ... But those countries will have to accept the Germanic view of the world in terms of fiscal discipline and austerity."...

"Fiscal austerity in the eurozone has now become part of the crisis rather than a solution to it," says economist Simon Tilford. The debt burden of troubled eurozone countries is growing faster than their economies. "So this is the absolute worst of all worlds: fiscal austerity, contracting economies and a dramatic increase in the burden of the debt relative to the size of the economy ...

"He's thrown some meat to the eurosceptics who like to see the British PM wielding the veto. (But) it is going to make it harder to defend British interests," said Simon Tilford of the CER. "Cameron has played a bad hand poorly.

"Nous sommes les grands perdants de cette affaire, ajoute Charles Grant, directeur du think tank CER. Notre position avait toujours été de dire: nous devons être à la table européenne, pour influer sur les réformes. Désormais, nous risquons d'être tout seuls."