Does Cameron really care if Juncker is the next commission president?

It's a well known rule in journalism that if the headline contains a yes/no question, the answer is always no, and this headline is no exception.

How dare I question David Cameron's earnest fury at the upcoming appointment of ex-prime minister of Luxembourg and veteran EU insider Jean-Claude Juncker? How can I claim he's not 100% sincere? Look! He's definitely doing his serious face!

Plus, he's set himself up for a big embarrassment if Juncker is appointed against his will. This fight is his big chance to look tough against EU federalists and deliver the reform he's promised the British people. If he loses, the tabloids will lay into him as a weakling.

And DC is really pro-EU at heart. He knows the benefits of free trade with one of the biggest markets on the planet far outweigh the costs. If the horrid federalist Juncker is at the helm when the British people get their much sought after referendum, could it swing the vote towards the exit, ruining all this?

I'm afraid I don't buy it, for several reasons.

Firstly, in the grand ideological battle between socialists and neoliberals, Cameron and Juncker are on the same side. Juncker is the chosen candidate of the European People's Party, or EPP, the largest group in the European Parliament. This party is made up the main centre-right parties of most EU member states. The British Conservative Party is a major exception. DC would privately probably prefer to be in this group, but has had to align his party with a load of fringe anti-EU politicians instead, to appease the fruitcakes and loonies faction within his own party. So I really don't think he'd find it hard to work with a commission president with whom he probably agrees 90% of the time.

The political situation back in the UK is trickier. DC will certainly lose face when the new president is announced, and have to put up with some bad press. But long-term, it's nothing. How many British voters could name the outgoing commission president? Juncker's not going to be making headlines in The Sun for very long, and this whole controversy will be forgotten by the May 2015 general election.

Another reason I don't buy it is that Juncker is definitely going to be the next commission president, and Cameron isn't stupid enough not to know this. How can I be so sure? I met a political consultant and EU expert last week who put it quite eloquently: "Juncker will be the next commission president, 100%," she said. Why? "Because Merkel has backed him."

If it's so obvious that DC has no hope of replacing Juncker with a reformist candidate, then why is he kicking up such a fuss about it? Politics is a game, and European Union politics especially so. Cameron knows he is going to lose this battle, but in Europe, that means he will get something in return. My EU expert pointed out that as Cathy Ashton is stepping down, there is also a vacancy for an EU head of foreign policy, and other senior commission positions will be up for grabs. If Cameron makes his serious face enough times in the run up to Juncker's inevitable victory, he will actually be in a stronger position to negotiate compensation for his own humiliating defeat. It's actually in his interests to make that defeat as humiliating as possible. That is when he will get out his shopping list of reforms to take home to Britain, to bolster his difficult 2015 election campaign and eventually, if he were to win that, to make the case for the UK to stay in the EU in the promised referendum.

Finally, if Cameron really wanted someone else to be the commission president, wouldn't it have made sense for him to suggest an alternative candidate? Yet I have not heard of any proposed reformist being lined up for the job.

Juncker's appointment as commission president should have been a victory for the European parliament. As its chosen candidate, his selection should have represented a link between the electorate and the commission, helping to reduce the democratic deficit in the European institutions and make their leaders more accountable to the public. Jean-Claude Juncker and Martin Schultz, his opponent and the main candidate of the centre left, spent the EU election period on a huge European road show, insisting to the voters that they were choosing between them as possible leaders of the commission. Instead, Juncker has effectively been reduced to a pawn in the usual back-room negotiations between heads of government.