She's the Model

If you absorbed all you knew about Germany and its people from the British press then “relaxed” and “charming” would be very low on the list of likely adjectives. Yet this was the unanimous view of a group of us who visited Berlin last weekend. An immensely welcoming city identified by mutual respect and social tolerance.

The general election had been held the previous weekend and delivered another term of coalition Government for Chancellor Angela ‘Angie’ Merkel (pictured). The campaign was not, like UK, characterised by rancorous arguments and wholesale misrepresentation of policies, like we witnessed during the recent Conference season. The main parties in Germany argued over the practicalities of strengthening the economy. The basis of German industry and public services is co-operation between unions and bosses. The idea of a Secretary of State for Education describing teachers as ‘militants’ like Gove did this week, would be treated with the ridicule it deserves.

It appears to me that the Germans are simply more grown up than us, more unafraid of presenting themselves as an intelligent, self-aware, discerning people. The UK appears to be increasingly suffering the cultural cringe, which we used to mock Australians for.

Over the weekend, I also found it easy to deny myself the sometimes dubious pleasure of British newspapers for a few days. It was hugely dispiriting to read on the plane home the reprehensible and boorish articles by the Daily Mail about the Labour leader’s, Ed Milliband’s late father, Ralph. It was clear to me that it was not the realm of opinionated journalism but blatant propaganda.

The headline sought to establish a slogan that Ralph was a man “who hated Britain.” Not only was it a weak and personal attack on the integrity of the Milliband family but also contrary to the record of history which clearly shows Ralph raced to join the Royal Navy, served with distinction for three years and lived an exemplary peaceful life as an academic and family man.

But he was also a life-long socialist. The Mail’s editor, Paul Dacre, saw an infantile opportunity to attempt to portray Ed as a Communist himself with a hidden agenda. Dacre clearly views his readership as so gullible and malleable that they might be persuaded by that clearly preposterous assertion. But it is not as if the readers would be toying with the idea of voting Labour in any event. Ed’s deviousness, would, according to the Mail, include stifling press freedom. This entire pointless melodrama has so obviously been contrived to falsely show Ed as wishing to control the press ahead of the imminent Parliamentary decision on Leveson.

In a truly bizarre and trenchant editorial on Tuesday, Dacre accused the Leader of the Opposition of having, “driven a hammer and sickle through the heart of the nation so many of us genuinely love.” It sounded like someone who was both very angry and drunk. Alistair Campbell captured the Mail most succinctly as having, “the worst of British values posing as the best.”

It is doubtful whether this newspaper would sell much in Germany. People would be surprised and dismayed to read the recurrent themes of Communist/Fascist conflict. Younger generations have put that behind them and the country thrives because it has a confident, outward looking aspect. While we in Britain have come expect, since Thatcher’s days of social division, that politics and media should be spiteful and wantonly divisive, Germany has quietly built a balanced society and from their derives its integrity and dignity as a nation.