What could Cameron have done differently?

It is hard not to see the results of last night’s European meeting as the first step towards a fundamentally different — and much looser — relationship between Britain and the EU. The UK, which for centuries has fought to keep any one power from dominating the continent, and for decades has sought to prevent a two-speed Europe from emerging, is now going to have to accept both. It also seems that it will have to protect itself from some form of fiscally-shaped missile against the City.
 
The irony is that the PM did not apparently push for any UK-only protection of the City, but a broader protocol such as the one championed here — which Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel then rejected. Even more ironically, in pushing against Britain, France violated a compromise it secured in 1966 called the Luxembourg Accords, which was an informal agreement stating that when a decision was subjected to qualified majority voting, the commission would postpone a decision if any member states felt that very important interests were under threat.