The German chancellor aligns herself with the union flag – sartorially at least – as she dazzles a joint session of parliament
They weren't quite playing Zadok the Priest as Angela Merkel swept into the Royal Gallery at the Houses of Parliament, but that was probably only because someone had spotted that a blast of Handel, a German who naturalised as a Brit, might not make the most tactful welcome for the chancellor.
Otherwise, give or take the odd sceptre and whatnot, the German reporter who observed at a later press conference that Merkel had been received like "the Queen of Europe" was not so very far off.
When François Hollande visited Britain last month he got potted shrimps and an awkward pint at a rain-lashed pub in Oxfordshire. Merkel, by contrast, was honoured on Thursday with a rare address to both houses of parliament, meetings with the party leaders and tea with the Queen, her feet barely touching soil that had not first been furnished with a plush scarlet carpet. It was almost as if one of them was the centre-right European powerbroker who might, if so inclined, be able to help David Cameron out of his EU referendum hole, and the other was a socialist with a zipper problem.
Merkel is a class act all the same. She had chosen to wear a bright blue jacket, she later revealed, because of how it would offset the red carpet in British colours. (If Cameron does not reciprocate by sporting yellow cross-gartered stockings, a red hunting jacket and a black topper on his next Berlin trip the Germans are encouraged to take all appropriate offence.) Her speech, too, had been carefully calculated to flatter, suggesting only in passing that what Cameron most wanted – her backing for a European overhaul significant enough to placate his backbenchers – he was probably not going to get.
She started in decent English but switched to German, smartly dividing the audience into those donning bulky headphones, and the German press/Nick Clegg. There was brief puzzlement that Cameron, in the front row, appeared to be following without translation, but it seemed aides had supplied a discreet earpiece. (Whatever else his skills, the prime minister is a master at avoiding the embarrassing photograph.)
If some of the noble lords in the audience, seated below Maclise's enormous paintings of British victories at Trafalgar and Waterloo, were doing their best to avoid adopting silly accents and mentioning the war, it was Merkel who brought it up, and then brought the other one up. Having spent the first 35 years of her life on the eastern side of the Iron Curtain, Merkel knows about liberation from tyranny. And yet to hear a German chancellor offer personal thanks to "those almost 1.7 million British servicemen and women … who served in Germany"– killing, while they were at it, millions of her compatriots – is an astonishing thing. She went on to quote Churchill. Get it Britain, this is me kissing your ass.
There was, of course, salt as well as sweet – although, appraising the overall flavour of the speech later, observers struggled to agree on the relative proportions of each.
A woman with a doctorate in the mechanisms of decay reactions and velocity constraints in quantum chemical methods is not one given to imprecision. But what did Merkel mean when she said she was not saying that the rest of Europe would not be prepared to pay almost any price to keep Britain in the European Union? It wasn't entirely clear. But it was a tiny sliver of wriggle-room, and that might just prove enough for Cameron to plot a way forward. Reported by guardian.co.uk 6 hours ago.
They weren't quite playing Zadok the Priest as Angela Merkel swept into the Royal Gallery at the Houses of Parliament, but that was probably only because someone had spotted that a blast of Handel, a German who naturalised as a Brit, might not make the most tactful welcome for the chancellor.
Otherwise, give or take the odd sceptre and whatnot, the German reporter who observed at a later press conference that Merkel had been received like "the Queen of Europe" was not so very far off.
When François Hollande visited Britain last month he got potted shrimps and an awkward pint at a rain-lashed pub in Oxfordshire. Merkel, by contrast, was honoured on Thursday with a rare address to both houses of parliament, meetings with the party leaders and tea with the Queen, her feet barely touching soil that had not first been furnished with a plush scarlet carpet. It was almost as if one of them was the centre-right European powerbroker who might, if so inclined, be able to help David Cameron out of his EU referendum hole, and the other was a socialist with a zipper problem.
Merkel is a class act all the same. She had chosen to wear a bright blue jacket, she later revealed, because of how it would offset the red carpet in British colours. (If Cameron does not reciprocate by sporting yellow cross-gartered stockings, a red hunting jacket and a black topper on his next Berlin trip the Germans are encouraged to take all appropriate offence.) Her speech, too, had been carefully calculated to flatter, suggesting only in passing that what Cameron most wanted – her backing for a European overhaul significant enough to placate his backbenchers – he was probably not going to get.
She started in decent English but switched to German, smartly dividing the audience into those donning bulky headphones, and the German press/Nick Clegg. There was brief puzzlement that Cameron, in the front row, appeared to be following without translation, but it seemed aides had supplied a discreet earpiece. (Whatever else his skills, the prime minister is a master at avoiding the embarrassing photograph.)
If some of the noble lords in the audience, seated below Maclise's enormous paintings of British victories at Trafalgar and Waterloo, were doing their best to avoid adopting silly accents and mentioning the war, it was Merkel who brought it up, and then brought the other one up. Having spent the first 35 years of her life on the eastern side of the Iron Curtain, Merkel knows about liberation from tyranny. And yet to hear a German chancellor offer personal thanks to "those almost 1.7 million British servicemen and women … who served in Germany"– killing, while they were at it, millions of her compatriots – is an astonishing thing. She went on to quote Churchill. Get it Britain, this is me kissing your ass.
There was, of course, salt as well as sweet – although, appraising the overall flavour of the speech later, observers struggled to agree on the relative proportions of each.
A woman with a doctorate in the mechanisms of decay reactions and velocity constraints in quantum chemical methods is not one given to imprecision. But what did Merkel mean when she said she was not saying that the rest of Europe would not be prepared to pay almost any price to keep Britain in the European Union? It wasn't entirely clear. But it was a tiny sliver of wriggle-room, and that might just prove enough for Cameron to plot a way forward. Reported by guardian.co.uk 6 hours ago.