David Cameron, the British prime minister, surprised everyone, maybe including himself, when he vetoed proposals to write a new treaty for the EU to stave off the financial crisis that threatens to overwhelm the euro-zone group of 17 nations. Now the questions is: was his historic decision the right one, or has he pushed the UK into the eternal night of European isolation?
Road to ruin or recovery?
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It is an important question, and not just for the British. If the EU's efforts to head off financial catastrophe are diminished by the UK's non-participation, that affects the whole world: the inevitable European recession would depress the global economy just as things are looking fragile in the US, and with doubts arising about the strength of Asian (mainly Chinese) growth.
For the Middle East, and especially a trading hub such as the UAE, just beginning to recover from the great crash of 2008, such a prospect would be a worrying one; the idea of one of the Emirates's oldest and most important trading partners, the UK, falling into the margins of economic history would perturb policymakers here, not to mention the tens of thousands of British expatriates who have made their lives in the UAE but who still regard Britain as their home.
So the stakes are big. Mr Cameron acted, he explained to the British House of Commons this week, out of a worry that the British financial services industry would be hampered by the new treaty arrangements.
The French and Germans have been deeply suspicious of what they regard as "Anglo-Saxon" financial and banking practices since the crash of four years ago, and want to rein in the British-US culture of "casino banking". Many people agree that things got out of hand, and the wilder excesses of the "masters of the universe" should be curbed.
For Britain, no longer a manufacturing base of any real significance, the problem is that the financial services industry is such a big part of the national economy that it cannot be ignored. Attempts to put it under the control of Brussels, Frankfurt or Berlin would have to be resisted.
Maybe Mr Cameron's decision was also affected by the anti-European feeling in the rank and file of the Conservative party, as his critics suggest. I believe that Europhobia reflects a deep suspicion on the part of British people about the continent. Centuries of imperial domination of the world (now passed, of course) have left the British with a distinct but now unjustified feeling of superiority over their continental neighbours.
"Fog in the Channel, continent isolated", is how one newspaper put it many decades back, but that feeling is still pretty universal in the UK.
What makes it all the more galling for the British is that it's the Germans who are calling the shots in the new European set-up. Again, it's hard to underestimate the marks of two world wars on the British psyche.
Surely the tipping point for Mr Cameron came when he was told that, in the new regime of greater fiscal and economic unity in the EU, those who signed up to the new plan would have to submit their budgets to the EU for approval. This, effectively, means German approval.
The prospect that the British chancellor (current incumbent George Osborne) would have to seek the approval of the German chancellor (current incumbent Angela Merkel, but with predecessors including Otto von Bismarck and Adolf Hitler) would never have been acceptable to the British people.
The debate is now raging as to whether the decision to stay out of the euro-zone strategy will turn out to be the end of Britain as a global economic power.
If Britain goes its own way, as it has done often in the past, it may be a benefit to stay out.
Each day, fresh evidence emerges of the financial mess at the heart of Europe. Last week it was the fact that almost all the euro-zone banks, including giants such as Germany's Deutsche Bank, were short of capital; a couple of days ago, the rickety edifice of the continent's interconnected credit default swaps (basic insurance against companies going bust) was exposed.
Against that sort of background, perhaps the British are better off out.
