Merkel and May: Common Origins, Shared Failures and Different Prospects

Angela Merkel and Theresa May are both the daughters of clergymen, so they grew up in the psychologically comfortable environment of a clergy house with attentive members of the local community willing to support them even though the majority of the outside population was post-Christian. May's route into politics was typical of an Oxford graduate who had always been a young Conservative. The much rougher road that Merkel followed depended on the collapse of East Germany, on Helmuth Kohl's determination quickly and fully to integrate the east and the west, and on the ruthlessness that she had learned under Communism to move in at an opportune moment and slip herself into Kohl's place. By contrast. Mrs May's accession to the party leadership was by default of David Cameron, whose panic flight from the tragic situation that had been created by his daft, imprecise referendum question was one of the most shameful incidents in British history.

Mrs May's great 'weakness' as Home Secretary was the abject failure of her department to come anywhere near meeting the policy requirement to reduce net immigration to the UK to fewer than 100,000 non-students a year. In one sense, the target was unattainable under EU Freedom of Movement rules; Mrs May should have said that clearly: she had no way of limiting EU immigrants. She would then have had to establish and enforce a quota of non-EU immigrants; and that would have to be a tight one. That would be impossible to enforce, too, because almost every MP is constantly battered with demands and petitions from their Asian constituents to support the immigration of family members, and to support cousin-to-cousin mail-order marriages; many urban constituencies could be swung if the whole south-Asian population united to support one party [Labour, if the Tories in government had imposed a real cap on immigration]. George Osborne was apparently scathing about this'failure' in and out of Cabinet meetings: so she had to dismiss him on taking up office as Prime Minister; and superficially journalism's loss is her political gain in not having his constant carping at her elbow. He will, however, be a powerful enemy outside the Westminster hothouse, and he will surely dissect her ongoing failure to address Brexit adequately.

Mrs Merkel's massive mistake was to allow around half a million chancers from the Muslim world to claim to be asylum-seekers when she opened Germany to Syrians who were genuinely in flight from the appalling chaos of their home country. Many of these men - Afghans, Eritreans, Pakistanis etc - claimed to be juveniles, despite their appearance being clearly that of adults. She and her ministers appealed to Germany's Christian tradition as a major ground for welcoming the homeless: a sound point, in principle, which was instantly vitiated by the recognition that the chancers must include some jihadis and some potential recruits to jihad. Other EU countries have refused to take the quotas of these thugs that Germany has persuaded to EU to thrust upon them, and that will continue to be a source of discord within EU institutions for years to come.

Even if May is able to achieve a half-sensible Brexit, with the help of Merkel [which is by no means guaranteed], there is no reason to think that this will make May's position in the UK more secure: it could create the situation in which the Tory party can ditch her. May has, however, one cunning ploy that she has used already and will doubtless play heavily in her Florence speech today: that the UK can contribute materially to 'security' in the EU on an ongoing basis, after Brexit. That could well have a positive resonance, [particularly with Merkel and with the central Europeans who are resisting the quotas of chancers and thugs whom Merkel is foisting on them]. But everything is 'up for grabs' in a quickly-changing world and European context; with Trump and Putin spoiling on the sidelines.