On the surface, Britain and India have much in common, including a language, a legal system, and cultural links. However, all this potential is yet to be translated into the unique relationship that Britain says it desires.

The agreement on the EU budget for 2014-20 marks a political success for the bloc's spending hawks--and in particular for the British government, which going into the European Council on February 7th-8th had adopted the most hard-line position.

Polls continue to show that voters prefer Mr Cameron as prime minister to Mr Miliband, but that they prefer Labour over the Conservatives. That might well change before the next election in 2015, but there is little to suggest that Mr Cameron's grand vision will be sufficient to persuade more voters to back his party.

The electorate chose stability, budgetary discipline and a broadly pro-Europe course over the populist anti-austerity and anti-Europe rhetoric presented by both the right-wing Party for Freedom (PVV) and the left-wing Socialist Party (SP).

Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras won the June general election promising to renegotiate the terms of the Memorandums of Understanding (MoU) that accompany the two EU/IMF bail-out deals (worth a total of €240bn) that Greece has to implement to avoid sovereign default.

In June, a pro-euro Greek government was sworn in, pledging to bring the country's public finances back on track to avoid a 'disorderly' default and eventual Greek euro exit ('Grexit').

Despite the economic downturn in the region, the political consequences and the incidence of social unrest in eastern Europe has been remarkably limited so far.

France's new president, François Hollande, has a strong political mandate, but very little room for manoeuvre.

The chancellor of the exchequer, George Osborne, has staked the British government's reputation on reducing the country's record-high peacetime fiscal deficit (11.4% of GDP in 2009). He has succeeded in making modest inroads since mid-2010, albeit by front-loading less politically contentious measures.