Little appetite for Cameron’s European plans at Brussels summit

When going round someone’s for dinner it’s traditional to take a bottle of wine.

But when David Cameron sat down to dine with his fellow European heads last week it was more like he whipped out a bottle of something scooped out of the nearest lavatory.

European heads have enough on their plate right now without having to try to find room for anything else let alone a UK offering that no-one round the table has a taste for, including the British PM trying to make it on the menu.

Grexit the possibility of Greece dropping out of the euro currency and maybe even the EU is already causing indigestion in Brussels.

Greece spent decades eating, drinking and being merry and when the bill arrived the country convinced their European chums to pick up the tab.

Trouble is they are demanding another round, despite still having no money, and that’s left them drinking in the last-chance saloon.

David Cameron’s dyspeptic demands for reform of the EU and the UK relationship with it are understandably not considered appetising at a time when the entire European project is in danger of going down the toilet. It is a horrible irony that the man who in his first conference speech as Tory leader correctly identified the party’s problems as spending too much time “banging on about Europe” finds himself doing exactly that.

Downing Street let it be known that even when he spoke to the Greek PM during last week’s European Council summit, Cameron had raised his own referendum issues. It’s getting embarrassing.

He’s the obsessive who commiserates with a cancer patient by complaining about a particularly stubborn verruca of his own.

And just as fungal feet don’t make for polite dinnertime conversation, that approach is winning him few friends at the diplomatic dining table.

Cameron’s allies read like a list of countries that can be relied on to award the UK a few points at the Eurovision song contest Malta, Cyprus, that’s it.

To be fair, the Irish usually set out to spare us the shame of “nul points” but they have most to lose from a Brexit the Westminster shorthand for Britain exiting the EU and which sounds like a particularly fibrous and tasteless breakfast cereal.

As the only European nation to share a land border with us, they are keener to talk about all kinds of everything but renegotiation.

Both France and Luxembourg home, it’s worth noting, of current President Jean-Claude Juncker have warned Cameron he can’t take an “a la carte” approach to Europe.

The choice of a French phrase by the French was no doubt deliberate.

Last week the Euro leaders chowed down on asparagus, sea bream and strawberries.

Given the best asparagus and strawberries come from Britain it’s almost as if the Brussels bureaucrats were trying to show literally that the set menu works for the UK.

When the plates had been cleared, Cameron got to make his pitch.

But he wasn’t setting out a list of demands, only asking that formal discussions can begin between UK and EU officials.

They’ll work out what’s practical then the PM can get political and try to persuade his fellow leaders to let him have concessions.

With full stomachs and tired heads and given Cameron has a mandate having been elected on the promise to hold an EU referendum, the rest of Europe gave the thumbs-up to technical talks beginning.

The PM trumpeted this technicality as a triumph.

Expect more of this.

Cameron will dress up crumbs coming from the behind-the-scenes bartering as the EU cooking up delights designed to keep the UK at the European table.

The question is whether the British people, and his Conservative backbenchers, will swallow it.