‘Mutti’ Mark #3 to change the face of Europe

FIRST, there’s deckchair-napping scandal – staking claim to the best sunbeds at four in the morning – then the Harry Potter soccer sorcery, like netting penalties better than anyone and becoming serial World Cup winners.

And ultimately, there’s the wirtschaftswunder – the ‘economic miracle’ – which translates to consistently out-performing the world’s trading goliaths, the USofA and China, regardless of whether times are booming or going belly up.

So what is it that makes the Germans so special, successful and ultra-competitive?

Those long in tooth and grey in locks will ascribe it to the Marshall Plan, the avalanche of American aid which helped rebuild Western Europe from the ruins of WW2 as a bulwark against communism (as always with US largesse, it’s wise to read the small print).

But it took far more than just financial pump-priming to launch first West Germany, then a united Deutschland, into stellar orbit and maintain its financial prowess. Dedication to excellence, a work ethic, reality on the factory floor, vision and creativity played no small parts either.

And now, when the world is still reeling like a punch-drunk heavyweight, on the ropes and slumped in an economic corner, somehow Germany thrives better than most, despite it producing some of the most expensive gizmos on the planet.

Talk about vorsprung durch tecknik, Mercedes, BMW, Porsche and VW/Audi have rarely had it so good.

So, to repeat: what singles Germany out for acclaim when the rest of the West – bar few exceptions, such as Canada and, latterly to a lesser degree, a reviving UK – is under the cosh of austerity?

Perhaps a clue lies in responses to a Daily Telegraph vox pop the other week, when readers were asked to rank which of five characteristics in politicians they rate highest: Intelligence; Personality/Charisma; Humour; Good Looks; Competency.

With a degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from Oxford, then an MSc from the London School of Economics, there’s no disputing Labour leader, Ed Miliband’s towering academic intellect, even if he appears to pack the charisma of a wet haddock.

Perhaps with Red Ed in mind, discerning Telegraph types voted 19.11% for Intelligence and 2.97% for Personality/Charisma.

Humour – a trait never better demonstrated than by the buffoonery of Silvio Berlusconi – faired abysmally (2.13%) and Good Looks even worse (1.13%). So much, then, for slick, telegenic Barack Obama, a serial faux pas maker, of whom no further comment by me is required, as regular readers of this column are well aware of my opinions of the US President.

Unsurprisingly, Competency came top of the pops, with 75.14% of respondents rating it as the vital virtue, which brings us neatly back to Germany or, more precisely, their leader, Angela Merkel.

Dumpy, frumpy and sporting a pudding-basin coiffeur which hasn’t change a jot during her eight-year reign, Mummy – ‘Mutti’, as the Germans satirically dub their Chancellor – is hardly the type of woman you’d pass up a hot date with Carla Bruni to meet.

In fact, in most respects Merkel is the antithesis of the modern politico. Intensely private, she doesn’t Tweet or text and disdains spin as much as she loathes glitz, just as you’d imagine from someone educated in the dry, unflashy realm of science.

So, while her peers crave the limelight, the 59-year-old Christian Democrat Party (CDU) boss is modesty personified – a quality inured in her by her Lutheran pastor father – and exemplified by her wardrobe, which is as unpretentious as her hairstyle.

Charisma and Looks, then, aren’t high on Merkel’s priorities, because she understands full well the devastation inflicted on her nation by posing, preening, demagogic leaders.

Instead, she has turned her homely demeanour and a lack of lustre into a security blanket the electorate values, continuing the no-nonsense, competency theme of her predecessors, Konrad Adenauer, father of the modern, democratic state, and Helmut Kohl, who ended East-West partition.

Meanwhile, behind Merkel’s unprepossessing façade lurks one of the shrewdest political operators on the planet, which is why – barring an apocalypse – ‘Mutti’ will be re-crowned Germany’s political queen for a third time come election day on September 22.

Because, even if not all her countryfolk admire the CDU’s centre-Right stance, they trust Merkel to act in Germany’s best interests. They know, too, she is perceptive to their simmering rage over blank-cheque bailouts to what they perceive as prodigal Club Med Eurozone members and faceless Brussels bureauprats whittling away EU member nations’ sovereign powers. This is evidenced by the upsurge in popularity of the new, Alternative For Germany Party, a Teutonic UKIP, which gained ground on a platform of ditching the Euro for a born-again D-Mark, a move 50% of the electorate find appealing.

But German manufacturers – especially the car industry, as I pointed out earlier – have fared exceedingly well out of the single currency and the nation has accumulated a huge trading surplus, which Merkel won’t gamble on an outbreak of jingoism.

However, what might change under a Merkel Mark #3 administration is a dilution of her arch Euro federalism.

She’s certainly taken note of how well David Cameron’s vow to give the people of Britain a referendum on future EU membership has resonated – as have Germany’s voters – should the Tories gain outright power in a 2015 election.

And, in a recent interview, Merkel spoke for the first time about the EU ‘giving something back’ to nation states, a hint that she maybe contemplating softening her pro-European credentials to ones that chimes more with the mood of her increasingly sceptical nation.

This, then, could see her facing down the European Commission’s insistence on further, cross-border immigration and the rights of new migrants to benefits they haven’t contributed a cent towards – a policy which both Germany and Britain vehemently oppose.

However, whatever happens after September 22, in all likelihood Europe will be dancing to the tune of a frumpy hausfrau – and unarguably the world’s most competent leader.

To read more of Hugh Ash’s comments, follow his prize-winning online blog – Views From The Mallorca Pier – at hughash.wordpress.com