How UK PM  David Cameron’s passionate dinner speech kept EU renegotiation alive

One by one David Cameron and the 27 other leaders of Europe walked into a dinner on Thursday night, with their divisions over British demands for a new deal in Europe exposed for all the world to see

Mr Cameron made a manifesto commitment to make EU workers wait four years to receive in-work benefits in the UK, but as they strode up the red carpet in Brussels the message from his European counterparts was unequivocably no. It was the diplomatic equivalent of a mugging.

Fast-forward eight hours into the small hours of Friday morning, and the 28 leaders emerged from their dinner professing confidence that a compromise was now possible, and that a deal would be forged in February allowing for an in-out referendum in June.

It was, it appears, thanks to a tactical shift by the Prime Minister.

In the run up to the meal, officials had been privately warning of a “dust up” in the best traditions of European negotiations – a flaming row, they predicted, from which crucible a hard-won deal would emerge.

Sources had spoken of driving through the European opposition, while Mr Cameron had told allies he was inspired by how Margaret Thatcher had hand-bagged her way to victory in 1984 to claim the UK rebate.

There was one problem. On the absolutely fundamental issue of “four years” and discriminating over in-work benefits it became clear that Mr Cameron had hit a brick wall, with no leader willing to give an inch. While Mr Cameron became increasingly frustrated with “the system” of Brussels lawyers that said it was illegal, EU diplomats spoke of leaders poised to slap the Prime Minister with the “reality” that his plan was a non-starter.

And so, over the dinner of chicken terrine, roast venison and spiced oranges, instead of banging his fist on the table Mr Cameron delivered heart-felt pitch that his vision of Europe – more competitive, more flexible and more realistic – could save a continent in crisis.

His renegotiation was not simply an electoral ploy to contain the eurosceptics, he insisted, but an attempt to address the anxieties of voters across the bloc.

The 40-minute speech – described as highly persuasive, laced with elegant rhetoric and even emotionally moving – is now being billed as a pivotal moment of the renegotiation during which Mr Cameron won sympathy by positioning himself as a committed European.