DOES David Cameron want to lead Britain out of the European Union? The Conservative prime minister says he does not. Yet his recent railing against the EU suggests that is the likely conclusion of his campaign to rejig the terms of Britain’s membership, ahead of an “in-out” referendum he has promised to hold in 2017. So does the frosty response it has elicited from Britain’s EU allies, especially Germany.

On November 3rd the German magazine Der Spiegel reported that Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, considered that a recent vow by Mr Cameron to curb EU immigration had taken Britain to the “point of no return”. If that might be an exaggeration, her previous statements suggest it was along the right lines.

The German chancellor would not like Britain to go, so will try to assuage Mr Cameron’s complaints. She has particular sympathy with his effort to deny EU migrants easy access to state benefits—a so-called immigration “pull factor”, which annoys Germans as well as Britons. But she says she will not agree to compromise the “basic principle of freedom of movement” within the EU which Mr Cameron has also now challenged, by mooting controls, including possible quotas, on EU migrants.

Tory Eurosceptics say she is bluffing, but Mr Cameron may have taken the hint. Sources in 10 Downing Street suggest the quota scheme has been shelved in favour of a renewed push to make Britain’s welfare state less open to immigrants. More is promised, in a speech on immigration from Mr Cameron, by the end of the year.

The truth is he will struggle to find any measure to appease xenophobic Britons—including around 17% of the electorate that has jumped to the Eurosceptic and anti-immigration UK Independence Party (UKIP)—which would not risk Britain’s EU membership. The irony is that the benefits of EU immigration are becoming ever clearer. Researchers at University College London, have shown that European immigrants are better educated and more productive than native Britons. They are estimated to have contributed £20 billion ($31 billion) to the Treasury between 2001 and 2011.

That will be handy for settling another of Mr Cameron’s European problems, a bill from the EU for €2.1 billion ($2.7 billion) owing to a decennial budget adjustment. It could scarcely have been worse-timed, with the Tories in the thick of a tough by-election scrap against UKIP in the Kent constituency of Rochester and Strood. So it was perhaps inevitable that Mr Cameron would protest against it, too. Yet there is little reason to think he will get British taxpayers off the hook; the bill is based on accounting rules Britain approves of. The best he can probably expect is for the bill to be paid in instalments and perhaps set against future British contributions to the EU. His grandstanding has been criticised by the new head of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker—which is embarrassing, given how hard Mr Cameron tried to block Mr Juncker’s appointment.

Philip Hammond, the Tory foreign secretary, did nothing to assuage the growing friction in Berlin on November 5th. Asked to comment on the fact that Balkan countries are keen to join the EU, he said it was “fantastic” that they were “banging on the door, warts and all, even with all the current flaws.” If Mr Cameron wants to get his way in the EU, he had better find an envoy who can bear to praise it.