King Charles won't bridge Anglo-German differences

By Martin Ivens

France is the UK’s “sweet enemy,” according to historians. The two former imperial powers — today, medium-sized, nuclear-armed states with outsize diplomatic ambitions — have an instinctive understanding, even a love-hate relationship. After centuries of friendship, enmity, envy and emulation, the prickly neighbor across the Channel is a known quantity.
Not so with Britain and Germany, who start with the presumption of mutual goodwill and shared values but often fail to understand each other’s political culture and national imperatives.

At one level, the British admire German intellect, thoroughness and efficiency; Germans in turn have a soft spot for British fair play, sense of humor and venerable traditions. But Brexit brought out the worst in both countries, and relations have been sulky ever since. So King Charles III’s state visit to Germany this week marks a belated change for the better.

Read | Charles warns Europe's security under threat in landmark German speech

Who better than Charles to set the seal on Anglo-German amity? To this day, the royal family is gently mocked by fellow English aristocrats as “German.” The ruling House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha changed its name more than 100 years ago in wartime to “Windsor,” but family ties are still close. The king’s address to the Bundestag was partly delivered in his host’s tongue. This effort paid off — on Friday, a Berlin tabloid’s front page dubbed him “King Cool,” a description few elder statesmen would object to.

The monarch’s father, Prince Philip, a fluent German speaker, served in the British Navy during the war, but two of his brothers-in-law, Prince Christoph of Hesse and Berthold, Margrave of Baden, fought on the German side. Post-war, the Duke of Edinburgh remained in touch with his German relations to the end of his days — despite the embarrassment of some of their links to the Nazis. Charles prizes his blood ties too — the grandchildren of his father’s sisters were invited to the official state banquet on Thursday.

Queen Elizabeth’s first state visit to Germany in 1965 had enormous symbolic significance with respect to the rehabilitation of West Germany after the shame of World War II. Live television coverage drew an audience of millions, and enormous crowds followed her wherever she went. Her visit to the Berlin Wall moved many to tears, just as President John F. Kennedy’s had before her. The Queen was polite and dignified, the living symbol of the respectability Germany craved.

Yet symbols have only so much potency. Five years earlier, President Charles de Gaulle of France went to the spa town Baden-Baden, once the watering hole of British royalty, to meet Konrad Adenauer, West Germany’s first Chancellor, and they forged a close personal friendship based on cooperation within what evolved to become the European Union. The Franco-German relationship came to take precedence over the Anglo-German one. Germany supported British applications to the Brussels club, but London could never come first in Berlin’s eyes as long as it regarded the EU as a purely economic association rather than a political project to bury wartime hatreds.

As the German president Frank-Walter Steinmeier referenced in his welcome speech to King Charles, the Brexit referendum result was taken by many Germans as a personal rejection. What followed was, if anything, worse. In the person of former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, the famous British sense of humor that had amused so many Germans came to be seen as a fundamental lack of seriousness overlaid by insolence.

On his first visit to Berlin as PM, Johnson teasingly described the state of Brexit negotiations as “Wir schaffen das” (“We can do this”). Then-Chancellor Angela Merkel had used those very words when admitting hundreds of thousands of refugees during the Syrian migrant crisis, and her domestic opponents never let her forget it. Germany’s long-serving stateswoman was hardly entertained by Johnson’s quip. After he denounced his own exit deal with the EU over the terms of the Northern Ireland protocol, German officials briefed that he was less trustworthy than President Donald Trump.

London, in turn, long despaired of what it saw as Berlin’s “theological” attachment to the EU. The rules of the single market dictate freedom of movement within the bloc, but a temporary, emergency brake on migration might have swayed many British votes in the referendum — the Brexiteers’ most effective card was that the UK had lost control of its borders. But Merkel would never concede the point.

The British complain that the Germans are more flexible with the rules when it comes to their own national interest. This week, for instance, the EU signed off on a deal to effectively end the sale of most new combustion engines from 2035 — but only after Germany received assurances about vehicles running on e-fuels.

I remember Tory Cabinet ministers, knowing Germany’s attachment to its automobile industry, assumed that trade concessions after Brexit would be easily secured as a quid pro quo for the preservation of a lucrative German export market. They were sorely disabused: Germany’s new role in the wake of financial crises as a stabilizer in the European system mattered more to its elites. In any case, the UK conceded the access to its markets that Germany required.

Rishi Sunak, Britain’s polite, technocratic prime minister, is currently getting better reviews in Germany than his Tory predecessors. The UK is a vital ally in propping up Ukraine in its struggle against Russia, and the recent Windsor Agreement to settle the squabble over Northern Ireland was greeted with relief in Berlin and with visible delight by the EU’s German Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen.

But the differences remain. The British, for example, place equal value on their political relationships outside Europe. Germany, although eyeing vast commercial opportunities in China and other overseas territories, sees its national interests through a continental prism.

Both countries are firmly anchored in the Atlantic Alliance, but the UK has AUKUS, its separate defense agreement with the US and Australia. This week, Britain, sponsored by Japan, another island monarchy, confirmed its post-Brexit tilt overseas by joining the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) which also includes Mexico, Canada, South Korea and Singapore. Sunak may have the classic “German” virtues of hard work and efficiency, but his early, unshakeable support for Brexit partly stems from a sense of wider possibilities outside the EU.

So the UK will continue to be torn between its continental commitment to European security and its ambitions for “Global Britain.” All the while, Germany has no doubts about its fixed (European) place in the world. Not even the friendliest of royal visits will alter those geopolitical facts.