Euro crisis - not over tonight

When you watch the limos draw up; the men and women in suits walk out and talk about the need to do a deal, it is all too easy to think that this latest European summit - the 14th in the past 18 months - is all about them and not about us.

Then you have to remind yourself that what is being discussed, debated and haggled over is how to save countries from bankruptcy, banks from going under, the currency which was meant to bind 17 countries together from collapsing - any one of which could push not just the European economy but the global economy into a nose dive.

The Eurozone looks set to announce tonight not a deal to save the Euro but the outlines of the framework for what might become that deal if the details can be hammered out. On her way in to this summit Germany's Chancellor Merkel revealed how little might be achieved tonight when she said: "I believe all travel here today with the aim of at least getting a bit further on."

Many believe that it is only when Germany agrees to underwrite the debts of the Eurozone or agrees to let the European Central Bank do it that this crisis will end. German taxpayers and the German government are understandably reluctant to do that.

David Cameron believes that it may not be until this crisis reaches two minutes to midnight that the real deal is done. That will not be tonight.