He looks isolated and will now have to deal with a Commission President he tried to block. 

Mr Juncker will lead the body that proposes legislation in Europe. 

And while Mr Cameron wants to reform treaties and return powers to national governments, other nations have elected a man who naturally leans towards a more unified European government. 

Back home the first challenge for Mr Cameron is to calm the waters among the Eurosceptics in his own party. 

One of them, MP Bernard Jenkin, told me: "This is a watershed moment.  It's a very important moment not least because I think the scales must fall from our eyes, that there is not going to be any substantial renegotiation of the treaties." 

Before the Juncker row erupted not many people in the UK knew much about the former Luxembourg leader. 

But what they do know now is that Mr Cameron took a stand against him becoming President of the European Commission, and he lost. 

Image:Mr Cameron did not want Jean-Claude Juncker to be EC president

Having lost this time - can he really promise to win support for his European reforms in the years to come before the 2017 referendum? 

It's a gift to UKIP. 

Nigel Farage believes the British public will see this as a taste of things to come. 

He told Sky News: "They saw a prime minister saying he was going to fight in Brussels and some of them would have had memories of Mrs Thatcher and handbags and thought gosh!  He's going to come home with some goodies! 

"He has come home like the England Football Team - utterly humiliated."