Juliet Samuel:
To engineer a successful Brexit, the UK needs to get into the mind of Europe’s biggest power
Angela Merkel is on holiday – but in a German way. The dependable Chancellor, living up to the image of her unflashy, pragmatic nation, has been pictured wearing the same red and white checked shirt on her Italian hiking trip for every one of the past five years. Through this comforting typecast, we believe we know Germany – and well enough to predict how it will conduct a complex, adversarial negotiation against us.
We don’t, though. In fact, if there is one constant of recent British foreign policy, it is that we keep misunderstanding Germany. Repeatedly, we convince ourselves that all the bad stuff happening to us in Brussels is a perfidious French or Eurocrat plot. From the common agricultural policy to David Cameron’s ill-fated renegotiation, we keep thinking, wrongly, that Germany has our back. With delusions like these, who needs enemies?
The myth of the unbreakable Anglo-german alliance has been a great comfort. Now that we have a serious matter to negotiate, however, it is preventing clear thinking. To engineer a successful Brexit, Britain needs to get into the mind of Europe’s biggest power.
Mrs Merkel often disappoints admirers of all stripes. After Brexit and the election of Donald Trump, the Left was convinced she would become the new “leader of the free world”. Instead, Germany has prevaricated on Russia and done nothing to shore up Nato. In a backlash against refugees, it has partially banned burkas. And Mrs Merkel has dismayed liberals by voting against gay marriage.
Yet if the Left’s German bubble keeps bursting, then the Right’s is no more resilient. By now, free tradeloving carmakers were meant to be calling for a post-brexit trade deal. Instead, the message is mixed. Germany’s corporate elites are aware of their trade surplus, but they are also staunch defenders of EU rule making, because it works heavily in their favour. They would, of course, like to keep trading freely, but defending the privileges of the EU club takes priority.
Germany’s general economic differences from Britain have been obscured by the EU’S bigger northsouth divide. However, these northnorth differences are large. Markets are held in low esteem in Germany and the rights accorded to owners of property are more limited. Landlords’ rights are tempered by those of tenants. Investors must share governance of companies with workers, who sit on company boards. This, along with restrictions on practising trades like plumbing, helps shield German workers from foreign competition.
Although Germany and Britain share a rhetorical affinity for austerity, only Germany practises it – and regards the debt-fuelled “Anglo Saxon” model with suspicion. Wolfgang Schäuble, Berlin’s austerity-loving finance minister, distrusts markets and favours strong controls on them, like short-selling bans. Germany also loves certain kinds of protectionism, such as tough powers to stop takeovers, and likes to export its regulations, via the EU, to dampen rivals’ competitiveness. Brexit is, of course, a direct threat to this model.
When not lauding Germany’s economic affinity with ourselves, Britain tends to go the other way and interpret Berlin’s economic power as a naked quest for total domination over the European continent – a type of “fourth Reich”, as the letters in my postbag often call it. This, too, misunderstands the German psyche.
Germany’s belief in the EU project might be self-serving, but it is also sincere and, as hegemonies go, relatively benign. Brussels mandarins certainly dream of sending crack units of EU troops into battle under their own flag. Modern Germany, though, is allergic to militarism and would never contribute enough to make this EU dream a reality.
An essential ingredient of German foreign policy, according to Paul Lever, Britain’s former ambassador to Germany, is its fuzzy inconsistency. Germany sees the EU as a necessary limit on the pursuit of national interests, but also uses it as a powerful vehicle for German influence. EU integration is a clear public good, most Germans would agree, but to what aim, few could say. Nationalism is a bad thing in the German mind, but nationhood is still important, as shown by Germans’ willingness to subsidise their own poor regions, but not Greece. EU institutions, structured very similarly to German ones, make democratic sense to German voters, but this is also because Berlin wields great influence over them.
This might all sound breathtakingly cynical to Britain, but that is our mistake. Germany has no Machiavellian plan to create and rule an EU superstate. Its citizens just tend to think, haughtily, that other Europeans would be better off if they were more, well, German. And in many cases, they are right.
Britain’s misunderstanding of Germany is behind many unforced errors. Mr Cameron made grand promises about reforming Europe, before realising that the roadblock to his plan was not Brussels, but its biggest power player, Mrs Merkel. Eurosceptics thought German pragmatism and love of free trade would set the tone for Brexit, but failed to factor in Berlin’s rigid, ideological commitment to the EU.
These mistakes have prompted us to overlook other potential allies, like France, which, as shown by recently leaked emails between its officials, shares vital defence interests with Britain. And they lead to lazy assumptions, like the idea that Mrs Merkel will step in to save us when the going gets tough in Brussels. We are now realising that, while Berlin will play a powerful role, it is also happy to follow EU procedures.
None of this means that Germany does not share many instincts with Britain. But its commitments elsewhere – to the EU’S Franco-german axis, for example, and to EU rule making – will always come first. By understanding Germany’s particular priorities, we can avoid provocative rhetoric about its trade surplus and instead use language – of shared democratic values and responsible trade – that generates goodwill.
Mrs Merkel is not Brexit’s fairy godmother, but nor is she the EU version of Adolf Hitler. The sooner we understand that, the better we can strategise for Brexit.