Germany

At times in David Cameron's EU renegotiations, it's seemed as though the Prime Minister struggled to be in the driver's seat. Now evidence has come to light that confirms Cameron's power struggle with one of Europe's main leaders. Speaking at the Hay Festival, Neil MacGregor -- the former director of the British Museum -- let slip the difficulties he encountered when Angela Merkel and Cameron arranged a visit to see an exhibition he on German history from the past 600 years. Of all the objects in the exhibition, MacGregor thought the VW Beetle would make a great prop for a photo opp for the two leaders. Alas, it wasn't to be. While Merkel and Cameron's teams were both keen on the idea, they couldn't agree who would sit in the driving seat. As a result, the photo was never taken.

An argument you sometimes hear from those sitting on the Brence (the Brexit fence) is that it’s a pity the EU couldn’t have stayed the same as it was when we first joined it in 1973. Back then, say the Brence-sitters, it was a trading bloc with only nine members, which made sense. Greece wasn’t a member, nor were Spain and Portugal, never mind Lithuania, Latvia and all those other countries ending in vowels. But if we could go back to that better arrangement — play fantasy politics, as it were — would we, with hindsight, want it to include France and Italy, two of the original nine? Their economies are both now looking pretty rackety. In fact, isn’t there only one country in Europe with which we would want to be BFF (Best Friends Forever)?

Germany is on its feet again; the country’s answer to Ukip, Alternative Für Deutschland, made huge gains at the polls, winning a presence in three state assemblies. The shadow of Auschwitz looms over all European politics on the subject of immigration and race, but obviously more so in Germany, and many people are worried. Their growth in popularity may have something to do with the chancellor’s decision to invite one million and counting people from the wider Middle East, in an gesture historians will probably see as the grandest act of folly of early 21st century history. Some people are worried that, along with FN, Ukip and Trump, AfD are extremists who represent a threat to the established order.

A rather impressive performance by Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) in Germany’s regional elections. Second in Saxony-Anhalt and double digit percentages in Baden-Württemberg and the Rhineland-Palatinate. Today’s papers have tended to conclude that despite AfD’s shock success, the elections were nonetheless a triumph, of sorts, for Angela Merkel’s policy towards migrants, if not for her party, the CDU. I can’t say that I see it like that. For a party which did not exist four years ago to take a quarter of the votes in one lander is a remarkable expression of dissatisfaction with the status quo. Add into that the fact AfD is held in some suspicion as being exclusively middle-class, if not Junker, in its make-up.

Angela Merkel continues to reap the whirlwind. In this weekend's elections Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) has emerged as the fastest-growing political insurgent party since 1945. It has managed to enter all three state parliaments - with over 10pc of the vote in Baden-Württemberg, Rhineland-Palatinate and almost a quarter of the vote in Saxony-Anhalt, more than double the centre-left SPD. It focused its campaign as a protest against Merkel’s migrant policy, a policy that paid off. Its success is more than just another example of Europeans letting off steam.

Surely there is a difference between Mark Carney’s intervention in the Scottish referendum last year and in the EU one now. In the first, everyone wanted to know whether an independent Scotland could, as Alex Salmond asserted, keep the pound and even gain partial control over it. The best person to answer this question was the Governor of the Bank of England. So he answered it, and the answer — though somewhat more obliquely expressed — was no. For the vote on 23 June, there is nothing that Mr Carney can tell us which we definitely need to know and which only he can say. So when he spoke to the Treasury Committee of the House of Commons on Tuesday, his opinion was no better than that of any intelligent and well-connected person who deals with money.

Imagine if Nigel Farage declared that police should be ready to shoot migrants trying to make it from Calais to Britain; saying: ‘I don’t want to do this, but the use of armed force is there as a last resort.’ And imagine that in spite of this — or perhaps because of it — Ukip were to overtake the Labour party in a national poll to become the most popular opposition party. This, in effect, is what is happening in Germany. The words above were spoken by Frauke Petry, leader of Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), the insurgent party which is threatening to make large gains in state elections in three key German regions next month.

The head of Amnesty, Kate Allen, was busily talking the most terrible balls on the radio this morning. In an interview on the Today programme she reminded everyone of how bad the situation in Syria is and indulged in the usual Conservative-bashing by arguing that Britain wasn’t doing enough to alleviate the refugee situation. Despite spending more than almost any other country on regional solutions to the humanitarian catastrophe and a commitment to take in 20,000 refugees over 5 years, Ms Allen particularly lamented that we were ‘not joining with the rest of Europe.’ Seemingly unaware that most of the ‘refugees’ flooding into Europe are not Syrians and not refugees, she insisted that Britain should nevertheless bring in far more of them.