By BAGEHOT|BERLIN
“MARK my words. Within a year she’ll be gone. She’s packed.” Therefore a senior Cameroon surveyed the landscape nearly precisely a year– and what seems like lots of political ages– back over supper. He was broaching Angela Merkel, whose handling of the refugee crisis 10 Downing Street thought about self-destructive. Undoubtedly, the thinking went, no leader could accept the arrival and settlement of many beginners and endure? The bafflement betrayed the British federal government’s bad grasp of the distinctions in between its electorate and political system, and those of Germany. Today it is Mr Cameron who is “packed” and “gone” while Angela Merkel cruises, albeit through choppy waters, to a 4th term as chancellor.
