Britain The Real Winner In Euro Crisis

From Reuters:

Sarkozy, Draghi winners in EU rift, Cameron loses

The French president emerged as one of the big winners of a European Union summit on Friday which ended with up to 26 member states agreeing to move forward in economic integration around the euro zone, and Britain alone in staying out.
"Of course this is not just a long-standing desire, but a long-standing goal of French politics ... because in the French tradition Britain never really belonged to the European Union, dating back to De Gaulle," said a senior EU official who attended the summit, referring to the French president's veto of British entry in 1963 and again in 1967.
By obstructing the wish of the other EU members to amend the bloc's governing Lisbon treaty to allow closer fiscal union among the 17-nation single currency area, British Prime Minister David Cameron managed to unite Europe against him.
He may be feted by Eurosceptics at home, but he emerged as the biggest diplomatic loser of the summit, leading his country into an isolation that all his predecessors sought to avoid.
For centuries, a basic principle of British diplomacy was to maintain a balance of power on the European mainland forming shifting alliances with the main continental powers.
Another winner from the Brussels summit was European Central Bank President Mario Draghi. Barely a month in office, the Italian has already exercised decisive influence, shaping the emerging euro zone "fiscal compact" behind the scenes, while warding off efforts to hijack the bank to bail out governments. Diplomats said the ECB was closely involved in telling euro zone leaders what economic reforms and budget discipline steps they should take.
Hours before Draghi came to the summit, the central bank had taken two decisive steps to shore up the euro area, cutting its interest rates to a record low 1.0 percent to soften a looming recession, and crucially extending long-term liquidity help to Europe's cash-starved banks.
But the ECB chief managed to avoid pressure from euro zone leaders to intervene massively to buy troubled states' bonds, which he fears would immediately weaken their resolve to carry out painful economic reforms.
After watching former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi back away from austerity plans and economic reforms he had promised to implement as soon as the ECB started buying Italian bonds in August, Draghi is determined to avoid a repeat. So while Sarkozy may have gone some way towards realizing Napoleon's dream, it is Draghi, for now, who looks more like the new emperor of Europe.

My view:


Despite the opinion of this article, the true winners in this development are the British people.


The trouble prone European Union, as their non-elected officials dictate fiscal policy to sovereign states, lurches from one crisis to the next.


It appears that the unelected ECB technocrat Draghi and Germany's Merkel are the two most influential people in Europe.


How long will it be until Mr. Sarkozy gets thrown under the Merkel/Draghi bus as Germany steamrolls across the rest of continental Europe? 


If Germany succeeds in keeping most of the EU intact, expect extreme austerity to be enforced upon the fiscally weaker members of Southern Europe and even France to save Europe's zombie banks..


Britain at least has its own currency.


As the EU demonstrates; control the currency, control the destiny of many.