David Cameron is Playing a Self-Inflicted Bad Hand Well

AFTER months of vague talk about “renegotiating” Britain’s EU membership and a flurry of visits to European capitals by the prime minister and his lieutenants, the moment had come. The prime minister would set out the terms of the deal he hopes to secure in Brussels next month as a letter describing them winged its way to Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council. In the event, his speech at Chatham House this morning revealed very little not already known. Mr Cameron wants to formalise the EU as a multi-currency union (protecting non-euro countries like Britain), terminate its symbolic commitment to ever-closer union, make it more competitive and require new migrants to spend four years contributing to the Exchequer before they have a right to draw benefits.