David Cameron didn't even come close to winning the fight. The British prime minister put his all into opposing Jean-Claude Juncker's appointment as the European Commission's new president, fearing that Juncker, Luxembourg's former prime minister and a stalwart of European politics, would only increase the power of the EU's institutions in Brussels -- the opposite of what Cameron, his party, and British voters seem to want.
In leaked comments, Cameron is even said to have warned German Chancellor Angela Merkel that Juncker's appointment could make a British exit from the EU more likely. Despite this, Juncker took up his post as commission president last Tuesday, after a European Council vote on his appointment last month called by Cameron saw the U.K. defeated 26-to-2. (Only Hungary's famously anti-Brussels prime minister, Viktor Orban, backed the U.K.)
Nevertheless, others in the EU did not casually dismiss Cameron's talk of Britain leaving. Downing Street won some concessions in the process, including acknowledgement that the EU's founding vision of an "ever closer union among the peoples of Europe" might not be for every member state. Many in the EU want to keep Britain attached.
Member states are right to worry about the possibility of a British exit from the European Union, a so-called "Brexit." Last year, Cameron promised voters that if his party wins re-election in 2015, they will hold an in-or-out referendum on the U.K.'s membership in the European Union before 2017. What a Brexit would mean for the EU's future -- and the future of the West more generally -- is unclear.
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