British Prime Minister David Cameron has sustained what looks like his biggest political defeat. Knowing he was destined to lose, he forced a vote among European leaders on whether Jean-Claude Juncker should lead the European Commission. He lost 26-2, with only Hungary's Viktor Orban backing him.
Juncker is not the right man for the job, but the vote is a bigger disaster than his election. It almost makes another Cameron defeat — in the U.K. parliamentary election of May 2015 — necessary to keep the EU together.
Cameron can't be faulted for not fighting Juncker hard enough. He did all he could, insisting that the Luxembourger was an old-style federalist unable to reform the EU and that picking Europe's de-facto prime minister was the prerogative of national leaders, not European Parliament factions, the biggest of which sponsored Juncker.
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