Remember this today: whatever happens in these last-ditch EU negotiations, David Cameron has frivolously and selfishly taken his country to the very brink for nothing more than marginal political self-interest. He has gambled everything he thinks is in the national interest in exchange for worse than nothing. What he has done is unforgiveable, shameful and shameless.

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He may pull it off: an agreement tomorrow followed by a “remain” vote in a June referendum. Victory! His historic legacy secured! That will be like giving a medal to a ski instructor for leading his group off-piste down a closed black run and pulling them out alive from the ensuing avalanche. I’m no skier, but I’d expect him to be banned from the slopes, his licence removed.

Let’s assume he does pull us out alive. What follows a “remain” vote? A sigh of relief from other countries facing Le Pen-type “out” movements. But it will be a sour sigh, angered at Britain giving succour to “out” parties wanting their own special terms. Our leverage and political capital will be used up for a good long time. The “in” lobby talks often of the influence the UK holds as one of the big beasts of the EU: Cameron will have greatly diminished it.

Eurosceptics are right to think that the terms secured are piffling, even if he gets everything on the table. That’s why Boris Johnson’s pretence to be waiting for the outcome is such a transparent sham. Nor should the “in” lobby pretend this insignificant little list changes anything worth the vellum it’s written on. The in/out argument stands or falls not on these squibs, but on a sweep of great issues every citizen should consider: who are we? Where do we belong in the world? What’s the future for our long-term interests? And which allies are closest to our own values? Migration may be at the heart of many people’s decision, but a leave vote doesn’t secure us against global mass movements.

Cameron won the leadership with a disgraceful pledge. Faced with a Eurosceptic opponent in David Davis, he promised to take his party out of the European People’s party, the big centre-right group in the European parliament. He knew very well the harm it would do to UK influence, but he went ahead and cobbled together a motley group of unsavoury rightists anyway. He said an in/out referendum would be wrong, but briefly spooked by the non-threat of Nigel Farage, he gave in. The air will not be cleared. Nothing will be resolved in his divided party, nor in a country made more deeply divided by the vote.

Cameron enters the “in” campaign having spent his entire decade as party leader undermining support for it. He deserves to lose, but we have to hope to God he doesn’t. Under him, Britain has had next to nothing constructive to contribute to the EU’s troubles, riven and immobilised over the migration crisis, and by the euro’s weakness to which austerity was the wrong answer. Fumbling over Ukraine and Crimea, effective diplomacy in dealing with Putin still eludes the 28 nations. America, with its grotesque Republican candidates, looks a less sane superpower ally just now.

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These are mighty issues, beside which the precise size of payment of child benefit to very few children of EU migrant workers is a mean-minded irrelevance to haggle over. So is his “emergency brake”, while Osborne’s bid to restrict EU regulation and taxation of our tax haven City is just squalid. As for resigning from an “ever closer union”, that looks peculiarly empty when the EU is pulling itself further apart.

Cameron’s pettiness demeans and embarrasses Britain, without actually engaging in honest discussion about the inherent dilemmas of EU membership. Joining a large group means group decisions, but together garnering more power against global forces. The Ruritanian option is charmingly decorative, but global corporations and powerful nations regard little local governments as no more than decoration on a veneer of democracy. Even less power to the people there. That’s the hard choice.

Cameron has even undermined the great reasons for the EU’s existence. Securing democratic freedom was its founding postwar purpose, which explains the hasty eastward enlargement when the Berlin Wall fell. Former communist countries, and Greece, Spain and Portugal, were all embraced, regardless of economic cost. Because the EU is a beacon of decency, the world’s oppressed travel here to this most stable, well-governed zone. But in begging for tiny concessions on benefits, Cameron has grovelled to authoritarian governments in Poland and Hungary who already test the margins of human rights acceptability. His promise of a British bill of human rights would let Hungarians and Poles claim the right to pick and choose their own too.

If Cameron returns triumphant this weekend, award him no laurels. Even if he wins the referendum for “remain”, he will have left both Britain and Europe in a weaker state than when he first aspired to become leader of his country.