Hold Brussels to account

After four years of economic crisis some kind of normality has at last been restored to European politics. The EU is at loggerheads with Britain again. After a prolonged period in which it seemed as if the EU would tear apart, its indebted southern members cast adrift from its more solvent northern members, it is almost comforting to see a return to the more traditional faultline in the EU: where the rest of the EU gangs up on Britain and accuses it of being isolationist.

Not once during the euro crisis has a country been singled out for such disapproval as Britain has since David Cameron demanded that the EU budget not be increased over the next eight years by any more than the rate of inflation. Fingers have been wagged at Athens from time to time, but never has Angela Merkel asked EU officials to prepare a set of negotiations which excluded Greece but included all other 26 member states.