Earlier in the week, I wrote about how David Cameron wanted to
use his leverage as a non-Eurozone member of the EU to wring
concessions as a condition of signing treaty changes. At the EU
summit, he presented his aims: basically, softening a financial
transaction tax that the other countries in Europe want, and
other policies that protect British banks. Because you need all
27 members of the EU on board with the preferred fiscal policies
that really only affect the 17 countries in the Eurozone,
Cameron thought he had the power to hold out. So Cameron vetoed
the revisions to the Treaty of Lisbon. And then the Eurozone
leadership, essentially France and Germany, went around Britain
and negotiated a bunch of Eurozone side deals.  Britain is
facing isolation in Europe after David Cameron vetoed a revision
of the Lisbon treaty, prompting a majority of EU members to
agree to draw up their own deal outside the architecture of the
union.  In one of the most significant developments in Britain’s
38-year membership of