“MARK my phrases. Inside a 12 months she’ll be gone. She’s stuffed.” Thus a senior Cameroon surveyed the panorama virtually precisely a 12 months—and what seems like many political ages—in the past over dinner. He was speaking of Angela Merkel, whose dealing with of the refugee disaster 10 Downing Road thought of suicidal. Certainly, the pondering went, no chief might settle for the arrival and settlement of so many newcomers and survive? The bafflement betrayed the British authorities’s poor grasp of the variations between its voters and political system, and people of Germany. Certainly, immediately it’s Mr Cameron who’s “stuffed” and “gone” whereas Angela Merkel cruises, albeit via uneven waters, to a fourth time period as chancellor.
The incident underlines one of many unhappy if perennial options of Anglo-German relations: mutual incomprehension. Unhappy, as a result of the 2 international locations share a lot, in pursuits and outlook. And perennial as a result of their political cultures are so alien to 1 one other.
The German institution merely doesn’t perceive Britain’s island mentality, and the advanced, post-imperial mix of conceitedness and insecurity that defines its stance in direction of the surface world (which I talk about in my newest column, on the transatlantic relationship). Britons, in the meantime, wrestle with Germany’s equally distinctive sense of belonging and obligation because the linchpin of the European order. The hole is even borne out within the architectures of the 2 polities. Westminster is a competition of Victoriana, a neo-Gothic reminder of Britain’s previous hegemony and Blitz-era defiance. Berlin’s authorities quarter across the Reichstag has largely risen previously twenty years; all buildings rebuilt from, or constructed on, the ruins of extremism. Its very streets are studded with Stolpersteine, or brass cobblestones marking the victims of Nazism on the addresses the place they as soon as lived.
The context of Theresa Could’s assembly with Mrs Merkel immediately in Berlin illustrated how little has modified since that dinner in London some 12 months in the past. Britain might have voted to go away the EU and purchased a brand new prime minister, however nonetheless that mutual incomprehension reigns. Many German leaders suspect that the British political class is on the lookout for excuses to kill Brexit. They fret that opening Europe’s patchy “4 freedoms” (individuals, capital, companies, items) to negotiation might carry down the union; “cherry selecting” (or “raisin selecting” as they are saying right here) being the last word crime. In the meantime their British counterparts have lengthy handled the vote to go away the EU as unquestionable. They usually think about that very patchiness a case for a chacun-à-son-goût type of European future; not solely do they need to decide the cherries/raisins, however they suppose the act of doing so good for Europe.
This gulf is mirrored in latest headlines. Wolfgang Schäuble’s latest interview with the Monetary Occasions—by which the German finance minister rejected discuss of an à-la-carte Brexit, seems in immediately’s German press as a moderating intervention in pursuit of a European consensus. Within the British press it’s claimed that he’s spoiling for a combat (“READY TO PLAY HARD BALL” reads one headline). In the meantime, Britain’s latest appearances within the German media aren’t flattering. Boris Johnson is mocked for suggesting that Italy’s prosecco gross sales might undergo if Italy doesn’t again a beneficiant Brexit deal. Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the Dutch finance minister, is broadly quoted calling Britain’s calls for “intellectually not possible”.
Many in London are fatalistic about this type of factor. Some pro-Europeans consider Britain will get a horrible deal that can do it a lot hurt. Some Brexiteers reckon Europe has no alternative however to fall at Britain’s ft. Whereas the previous group is nearer to the reality, neither has it fairly proper: there may be lots to combat for. In Brussels a tug-of-war is happening between federalists who need a airtight Brexit settlement and Anglophiles who need one incorporating a transitional deal which may information Britain in direction of some type of affiliate membership. Which prevails—and thus what position Britain performs in Europe’s future—partly depends upon the growth of the pool of mutual assumptions, hopes and priorities uniting London and Berlin. At this time’s encounter between Mrs Merkel and Mrs Could was awkward and stilted, which can be pure at a time when the latter is new and the previous extra involved with America. But it surely should not stay that method.
