Britain’s prime minister arrived in Berlin a day after his speech in the Rose Garden, the prime minister’s residence in London, where Boris Johnson held his coronation parties, to warn his countrymen that the country’s finances are not all rosy. it is. The Labor leader has delivered a painful budget, bringing down sharply those who had fallen into a state of euphoria after his sweeping election victory last summer.

Blame it on the Tories

The excuse that the Conservative Tory government left behind a hole of around 22 billion may be valid, but the patience of the British has a limit and they generally do not like governors who start their term with excuses.

Those who observe Germany’s current structural problems may refer to wrong decisions and failures, but even this cannot be invoked by Chancellor Scholz to justify the coordination difficulties of his government, which a year before the next elections seems to have thrown a blank towel, with one member of the ruling Greens going so far as to call it “transitional”. As if the other headaches weren’t enough, shortly before the elections in Thuringia and Saxony came the terrorist attack in Solingen to further dynamit the climate and further inflate the sails of the far-right Alternative for Germany.

The optimism that the German social democrat expressed before the summer holidays that the bad climate can be reversed, now looks even more like wishful thinking, but absolutely unfounded.

Members of the same family

Soltz and Starmer have known each other for a long time and may have briefly reminisced about better days gone by. Perhaps they were nostalgic for the pre-Brexit era, when in the face of Britain Germany found a country that believed more in free trade and was a counterweight to the daydreams and grandiose plans of the French. One often reads in the German press how much the Germans have missed the British in the EU since they chose their own lonely path.

The British Prime Minister had, however, pledged that he wants to bring the island back closer to the European continent. Where else could he start this effort, than the strongest country in Europe? It certainly helps that the two politicians are members of the same (former?) great political family. Starmer came to Berlin almost immediately after his election, when his predecessor Rishi Sunak had been out for 18 months. The chancellor assured that Germany is willing to take the “outstretched hand” for cooperation.

Common problems

Despite the “divorce”, the problems remain common and this was recorded in the discussions. It is not only the similarities of incidents such as Southport and Solingen that point to societies in flux. It’s all dead ends in immigration policies. They are the ominous forecasts for marginal growth of the economies of the two countries. The hoarseness of the war in Ukraine, which costs both of them many billions and they would like to see some light in the deadly darkness at some point. It is apparently the common anxiety over the possibility of a Donald Trump victory in November. Political realism dictates almost as a one-way street the need for a “fresh start” in the relationship that Keir Starmer has spoken of several times.