How epoch-defining developments in German and French politics will shape Brexit

The expectation is that sometime this autumn, after a crazy year of European populism and exciting elections, and with a new German government formed, then Chancellor Merkel will sit down with Theresa May and talk Brexit. That’s when the two trading partners, Germany and Britain, that are the EU’s largest net contributor nations, arrive at a serious understanding. This fix can then be sold to an ailing France and communicated to the other member states and the European Commission. Forget all the wittering from the European Parliament. Job done.

It is a superficially alluring idea this. Merkel is supposedly the Queen of Europe, someone who has been in office for eleven years, and any deal will come down to her, won’t it? After all, the leaders of small EU member states that take out more than they put in, and do not seem to have any concept of how the single currency works and how dependent it is on the City of London to make the eurozone’s giant debt machine go round, can suck it up. Merkel decides.

There are several flaws in this view, however.

Not least of which is the reality that Merkel is no longer guaranteed to be Chancellor by the end of the year. The sudden emergence of Martin Schulz as the centre-left SPD’s candidate earlier this year has electrified the German election. Germany votes in its federal election on the 24th of September.

Merkel remains the favourite, but recent polling shows Schulz gaining in a contest in which the SPD was thought to be the automatic loser. Even Schulz’s alleged weakness, that he has never had a seat in the Bundestag or a governing position other than being a mayor earlier in his career, looks like a strength in an era of upsets. His presidency of the European Parliament and role in Brussels as a fixer means he does not qualify for insurgent status. But he can – and is – saying that he is not part of the Berlin establishment. In this way he could win.

In Whitehall, this dramatic development is forcing the British government to recalibrate and at least to consider the possibility that Merkel will not be on the other side of the negotiating table. Without the pro-business and pragmatic Mrs Merkel there to broker an arrangement with the EU, could Brexit descend into a brawl? Might the excessively pro-Brussels Schulz want to give the UK a punishment beating, to show other countries who might consider escaping the EU what happens when they dare to try?

It is not that simple.

As one British minister puts it, for all the hype about Merkel it is worth asking when she has ever really done the UK any favours or backed the British position when it matters. When the then Prime Minister David Cameron quite rightly tried to block the federalist fanatic Jean Claude Juncker (Schulz’s ally and friend) from the post of President of the EU Commission, Merkel was completely useless, leaving Cameron stranded. In the subsequent doomed UK renegotiation when she might have been the power broker, or the architect of a redesigned two-speed EU with proper movement on migration, offering enough change to persuade the British voters to stay, she was equally unimpressive.

Schulz is presented by his enemies as a federalist and leftie loon. His personal story suggests much more nuance than that. He is a fascinating character. His left-wing policeman father’s anti-Nazi experiences in the Second World War, and it is said positive encounters with the British after the war, have made him, it is claimed, something of an Anglophile.

Yes, he has criticised the successful market and labour reforms that powered Germany’s recovery from its post-reunification slump, but his outlook is surprisingly early-1990s Clintonite (Bill, not Hillary) in the way he emphasises backing those who work hard and obey the rules. If only Bill had followed the second of those rules.

Schulz is also the quintessential autodidact. After he flunked school, and saw his hopes of a football career ended by injury, he fell into alcoholism. Acquiring a trade as a bookseller ended up being his salvation. It meant he devoured every text he could get his hands on.

Among his weaknesses, and what may halt the SPD’s rise, is a reputation as a starry-eyed Europhile and advocate of the EU underwriting and issuing pan-EU debt, which is about as popular a position in Germany as a being a militant vegetarian at a sausage festival in Bavaria. In anticipation of the assault his supporters are pointing out that Schulz says he doesn’t want an EU superstate. Equally implausibly, his friend Juncker has this week been, hilariously, trying to help by saying that the EU should be more modest in its ambitions. Bit late for that.

A shock Schulz win is not preordained to make it more difficult for Theresa May, however. Negotiations are sometimes better conducted with an unapologetic and straightforward opponent than with a compromised figure such as Merkel who talks a lot and does not deliver.

Once Whitehall and David Davis’s leaving the EU department are done war-gaming this scenario, their thoughts turn to France.

Oh dear. There the likely final choice in the presidential contest this May will be between the devil and a dud in a deep blue suit. The rise of Emmanuel Macron, an even lighter-weight version of Tony Blair, is truly a thing of wonder. The man who is supposed to stop the National Front’s Marine Le Pen, if the conservative former Prime Minister François Fillon as expected falls out over a corruption scandal, last weekend attacked in inflammatory terms the French colonial record in Algeria, a surefire way to get doubtful French conservatives to consider switching to Le Pen.

Here, the Blair comparison is unfair, to Blair. Macron’s Algerian intervention is the equivalent of Blair having attacked the British record in Ireland months before the 1997 general election. Blair did not do this. He is many things, but he is not stupid.

Incidentally, the appalling Le Pen this week enjoyed a stroke of luck. The European Parliament announced that it is removing her immunity in the investigation into her expenses. For an anti-EU outsider such as Le Pen this is a gift. Being pursued by an organisation as dissolute as the European Parliament over alleged expenses fraud is akin to being accused of theft by Ronnie Biggs or excessive violence by the Kray twins.

It gets worse with Macron. Even a moderate leaver feels the blood rise on reading his comments this week about Brexit, in which he described the British vote as a “crime”, a remark to which the most polite response might be “get stuffed, sunshine.”

And this dunderheaded fellow Macron, this accident waiting to happen, is the supposed last line of defence against a Le Pen victory? Good grief.

In Britain the attention is, for obvious reasons, concentrated on what May and her ministers will ask for in the talks to come and whether they will get it. There the outcome depends to a large extent on the main personalities in Germany and France, who will have to rally a deeply dysfunctional EU. Perm any of those likely negotiating options – Merkel and Macron, Schulz and Macron, Merkel and Le Pen, Schulz and Le Pen – or add in Alain Juppé if he replaces Fillon and wins, and they each come with problems. Any combination that involves Le Pen probably means the end of the EU.

None of this should be considered a reason to stay or to somehow delay Brexit. Quite the opposite. It is another good reason to leave, politely. Any governing organisation such as the EU that cannot control its borders, launches a catastrophic single currency and is then at the mercy of a Macron or Le Pen is in terrible trouble. They are in a mess and the integrationist EU is an awful idea getting found out.

The British will have to be realistic though, and get used to paying much more attention, not less, to events in Germany and France. This weekend the UK government is busying itself getting ready for next week’s Budget at Westminster and soon after that it will deliver the Article 50 letter that instigates Brexit. The historic outcome rests as much on potentially chaotic events in Berlin and Paris as it does on what happens in London.