When I was a girl – shortly after the repeal of the Corn Laws – a common rhetorical question was ‘Who won the bloody war anyway?’ whenever the Germans came up in conversation. We were The Sick Man Of Europe; they were My Perfect Cousin. Not any longer: German politics now looks rather chaotic compared to ours. Their chancellor Friedrich Merz stumbled into office this week on the second go. So terrified is the paternalistic, pompous German establishment that they are considering banning the AfD: that notorious fascist party led by a lesbian in a relationship with a Sri Lankan woman. Where did it all go so wrong for our German cousins?
No one blames the Germans for wanting to stay in the EU. They co-own it, for a start
You have to go back to the the 1966 World Cup, when England beat West Germany in the final, for the last time that the natural post-War order between the two nations was intact; back then, the echoes of World War Two were nourished with England football fan chants of ‘Two World Wars and One World Cup’ to the tune of Camptown Races, and ‘Stand up if you won the war’ to the tune of Go West.
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