Britain should follow Greece and hold a Referendum

David Cameron was said to have not slept a wink on the 20 hour flight to Perth last week following a tense European Summit last Wednesday. He paced up and down the cabin thinking of how he would be able to strike a balance between being an influential player in Europe without having to be tied to it.

The nature of last Wednesday's summit represented a sign of things to come. The 27 members of the EU met for an hour on superficial matters before the 17 members of the Eurozone got to work on the package that would save the world. The UK, the so called, "financial capital of Europe," was not allowed in the room.

The 17 members, led by the French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, and the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, made the key three-pronged plan decisions in the early hours of Thursday morning. But the agreement went a step further insisting on making "this" meeting a biannual regular event. The new Euro Summit, a "club within a club" as some analysts called it, would decide economical, fiscal and monetary policy for the Euro, with the U.K. government's economic team none the wiser.

The Summit will even have its own president, although this is yet to be decided whether it will be a full time position.

Of course, joining the Euro (and the "new club") is out of the question for Britain. Besides being political suicide for whichever leader makes that official party policy, economically Britain's taxpayers would be liable to fund the infamous Greek bailouts as well as pile money into the new "firewall fund" - the European Financial Stability Fund (EFSF).

So the prime minister was left sleepless and the issue was left dangling in the air. How would Britain be stronger? How could he be stronger?

And then Greece, of all countries, did something late on Monday night that the prime minister was not brave enough to do with his own country. George Papandreou let the country decide its future and not Europe. The very fact that Greece is being helped out of its economic problems would make anyone think that they would be clinging to any kind of deal the Eurozone offers them.

But seeing that the very people affected by whatever decision the Eurozone makes over Greece, had so far not a single word on the issue, the Greek prime minister chose to hand it back over the citizens that voted him into power.

Seeing now how Papandreou has rather slapped the Eurozone leaders in the face, and the financial markets in the process, Cameron can surely now keep face and take the same line and hold a public "in-out" vote on Europe? What has Europe got left to offer us now? Literally shut out of EU economic policy and facing huge contagion from the Eurozone.

Yes, the prime minister has long been a fan of the so called single market, but if that market is falling by the wayside, why not focus on the U.K. market, similar to how Brazil, India, China and Russia have all focused on their own markets?
Time for "reglobalisation" will eventually come. But there would be no stronger position our own political leader could take by holding the same referendum as Greece has taken today.