David Cameron did not sign up to the EU treaty on the eurozone; the UK economy did not hit its target of 1.7pc growth; the Chancellor did not backtrack on his deficit reduction programme; but despite all this the euro did not collapse. It creaked, it groaned and it inflicted immense pain on its constituents, but it remained intact. Throughout all of this we had the deadlines. In September it was George Osborne saying we had just six weeks left to save the euro. In November EU finance commissioner Olli Rehn dropped that to 10 days. But it was Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy who put us most near the edge. “We have ... (full story)