Merkel to Cameron: ‘You are hated ...Britain is Europe’s problem child’
It’s the sensational biography that set Westminster alight – and now, in Part 2 of our incendiary extracts, we reveal the psychological power play that may change EU history...
AT THEIR first meeting in Berlin shortly after the 2010 Election, Angela Merkel is intrigued by this charming ‘upper-class’ Prime Minister, admiring his confidence and manners. But there is tension in the air. She is no longer furious but she is still disconcerted at David Cameron’s decision to withdraw the Conservative Party from the EPP (the mainstream Centre-Right European Parliament group – a move seen as a bid to appease Tory Eurosceptics). She is not vindictive and her anger has mellowed.
She concludes that the charming new PM is apt to make up his mind too quickly.
She surmises, correctly, that he hasn’t thought through fully Britain’s position as a non-euro country.
The eurozone crisis dominates their early Merkel tells him: ‘He who has visions should see a doctor’ discussions. Merkel is particularly upset when Cameron describes himself as a ‘Eurosceptic’. He phones her to explain that the word ‘sceptical’ in Britain doesn’t mean the same as in Europe: ‘It doesn’t mean I am against the European project. What I want is a reformed Europe.’ She replies: ‘He who has visions should go to a doctor.’
When Germany considers a change to the Lisbon Treaty to help it deal with the eurozone crisis, Cameron thinks he has persuaded Merkel over lunch in Berlin to agree to safeguards for Britain’s financial sector.
The British strategy is to rely on Merkel – it’s ‘Berlin or bust.’ But Merkel concludes it is more trouble than it is worth to take up British concerns.
Cameron phones her. ‘I’ll have to veto,’ he tells her in a state of agitation.
‘In that case, I’ll have to do it without you,’ she tells him emphatically.
He takes a breath. ‘You’ll have to use the EU institutions and they belong to all of us and we won’t let you,’ he says.
‘We’ll go to the European Court of Justice,’ she replies. Everywhere she turns, Merkel tells him, he is standing in her way. She is exasperated.
Cameron duly exercises his veto. Overnight he has become a hero to the Conservative Party. But at a price. If he is to use his ‘Berlin or bust’ strategy again, he has to learn fully how to play Merkel.
Throughout 2012, the Prime Minister comes under growing pressure to commit to a referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU. Merkel is the key, so Cameron invites her to a private dinner in No10 on November 7.
He greets her at the front door and shows her to the Pillared Room where they had a drink. Then they go through the double doors into the Small Dining Room. Cameron shows her a Power-Point partly in German with pictures of them hugging. The aim is to engage her and inject humour and informality. He describes his own Euroscepticism, and how he feels the British public don’t give him the benefit of the doubt over Europe. She asks why frustration with the EU has got so high. He tells her: ‘The single currency changed everything. You are in the midst of a huge existential crisis which we are not part of.’
She looks at him intently trying to under- stand him. She is reserving judgment on him. Interrupting him, she asks whether he wants to stay in the EU. ‘I’ve supported our membership all my political life, but I’m worried if I don’t get reforms, I won’t be able to keep Britain in. If I don’t listen to British public
opinion, then Britain will depart from Europe. The European project was mis-sold here.’
The genie is out of the bottle, Merkel replies: antipathy has been allowed to grow in Britain in a way that she wouldn’t have allowed in her own country.
‘I have a problem with my party,’ Cameron replies, ‘even though elements in the Conservative Party are more pro-Europe than the country, which is even more sceptical.’
She insists both can rally round an agenda of greater competition. Cameron replies: ‘But the more I fight for competitiveness in the EU, the more you leave me to do it on my own. It is very frustrating.’
She is staring very hard at him. If Britain leaves the EU, or if it leaves Britain behind, she tells him, Europe will be lost. ‘Without you, I don’t know what is going to happen.’
She says his use of the veto in the EU the previous December may have made him a fleeting ‘hero’ in the eyes of his country, but he was too forceful. He says that is the British style. Other EU cultures do things differently, she says. To be forceful is to be British, replies Cameron.
Perplexed, Merkel refuses to take pride in being controversial. She is fascinated by the way Cameron’s mind works; but she still doesn’t think he is right.
Why can’t he compromise like her? She tells him about her own statecraft and warns him not to rush into saying, ‘I’m leaving the ship.’
‘No,’ says Cameron, ‘I have to be pushy for our interests; but I don’t want Britain to leave.’
It is the frankest conversation they have ever had.
She advises him how to conduct himself at EU meetings. If he is seen as just a wrecker it will be hopeless. If he makes it ‘Britain versus The Rest’ it will become self-fulfilling, she warns starkly.
He is defensive: ‘I don’t accept we just turn up at the Council to be difficult.’
He uses his full emotional force with her: ‘I need to make a pitch to the country. If there is no acceptable deal, it’s not the end of the world; I’ll walk away from the EU.’
Now the Chancellor draws on her psychological arsenal: as an older woman, she tells him, it is difficult to know whether she regrets him being so decisive, or to admire it. It can be very helpful to have friends, she says.
He recalls his ‘humiliating’ defeat over the EU budget in a Commons vote two months earlier.
What happened to the Conservative MPs who voted against him? she asks.
One of Cameron’s aides intervenes to say some Tory MPs had never accepted his leadership and wanted to destroy him. She will try to help – but there are limits. Merkel has some sympathy for his argument that the EU was very different to the Common Market Britain joined in 1973. She understands how the British public might have felt cheated.
But before she leaves, they discuss the EU budget negotiations.
Merkel is irritated that the British Treasury has spoken in public about the real-term freeze of €886million which Cameron hopes to secure. ‘Why did you put this number out there?’ she exclaims. Why does he always do this, she complains.
Everyone will go to the barricades if that is his position. Now it is Cameron’s turn to be direct: ‘I’ll block it if I have to.’
She is unmoved. You keep putting yourself up as an opponent and we all hate you and isolate you, she says.
Why can’t he make any tactical shifts, like Germany? She worries that Britain is the EU’s ‘problem child’.
In January 2013, after a sceptical George Osborne is finally won round, Cameron finally promises an EU referendum by 2017.
The speech is received positively in Berlin. But Cameron’s relations with Merkel come under renewed strain in 2014 over the appointment of Jean-Claude Juncker as president of the European Commission.
PM: ‘No deal is not the end of the world... I’ll walk away from EU’ Take advice of an older woman: ‘Don’t force us to isolate you’