Introduction

When she first came to power in 2005, Angela Merkel was often called Germany’s Margaret Thatcher. The two leaders, it seemed, had much in common. Not only were they both prominent women in the largely male political world, but both had trained as scientists, both were Conservatives, and both had risen to the top of their (male-dominated) parties primarily through intelligence and hard work rather than connections and networks.

In some ways, however, Tony Blair makes for a better comparison figure for the German chancellor than does Margaret Thatcher. Whereas Thatcher was an ideologue who set out her views with force and clarity and then sought to show the public why they were right, Merkel, like (at least the early) Blair, has always been more attentive to public opinion. Merkel’s is not a politics of Martin Luther’s apocryphal “Here I stand, I can do no other” but rather one that prefers to “measure the mood on the streets and govern by it.”

Again like Blair, Merkel has done much to reform her party, taking it towards the political centre ground (in her case from the right) by, for example, accelerating a nuclear phase-out, backing a minimum wage and abolishing army conscription.

Finally, again like Blair (and most unlike Thatcher), Angela Merkel is a serious Christian believer but one whose faith, although much speculated about, is thoroughly private and difficult to discern with any confidence or in any detail.

Read the article “The Mighty and the Almighty: Angela Merkel” on theosthinktank.co.uk.