Take a deep breath. Here is a mad proposition: Europe is about to save the euro. Don't bet the bank on it. European leaders have shown an unmatched talent for messing things up. But there has been a change in the political dynamics of the continent's sovereign debt crisis. This time policymakers might just get it right.

Before such thoughts are dismissed as the Panglossian daydreaming of someone who thinks that it is really quite important to rescue European integration, I am happy to concede the case against.

At every turn the story so far has been one of hopes raised and dashed. Angela Merkel, Nicolas Sarkozy and the rest have gone into summits promising to get ahead of the financial markets. They have emerged with packages as halfhearted as they have been half-baked. After a short respite, during which investors and bond traders gave them the benefit of the doubt, the crisis has returned with the fears of the markets redoubled.

No one has lost any money underestimating the quality of political leadership. The problem has not simply been of ineptness on the part of the eurozone leaders or of obduracy on the side of the grey-haired technocrats at the European Central Bank - though both elements, it should be said, have played their part. There have also been differences of principle and substance spanning history and culture, economics and politics. The flaws in the design of the single currency have been brutally exposed.

David Fuller's view Written with wit and perception, Philip Stephens offers a realistic summary.

Regarding his conclusion, the ECB is definitely funding the European banking system, so the "grand bargain" is not an illusion. Stop the haemorrhaging and the world will rally around the euro because stability is so obviously in our interests.