Pointedly shifting tactics from a distasteful attack on the person to a potentially more honourable defence of the principles, David Cameron argued - with respect to the Spitzenkandidaten procedure - that the nomination of Jean-Claude Junker as Commission President was "an irreversible step which would hand power from the European Council to the European Parliament" and "end the decades-long practice of always finding a candidate by consensus". On the second point, reaching consensus through a process of deliberative political bargaining is not the same thing as a lack of transparency ...