For now, the rapprochement between Keir Starmer and Olaf Scholz concerns defense. But the alliance can expand further, also given France’s weakness. And for Italy? There are advantages.
Ready, Fire: Keir Starmer, the New British Prime Ministerwaited just two months before flying to Berlin on an official visit. His predecessor Rishi Sunak had been waiting much longer: 18 months. It would be a mistake to believe that Starmer wanted to cut it short because in Berlin Olaf Scholz, a Social Democrat and therefore politically a “relative” of the Labour Starmer, has entered the final mile of his mandate. And it would also be incorrect to believe that Starmer speaks to his daughter-in-law so that his mother-in-law understands. That is, that he enthusiastically launches into a bilateral agreement with Germany in order to shake up the European Union. This last eventuality, mind you, is also feared by conservative circles across the Channel. Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, eccentric and highly cultured signature of the newspaper Telegraphwhile looking askance at the Anglo-German “rapprochement”, for example admitted through gritted teeth that Germany is perhaps the only tenant in the European condominium towards which they would not be able to snap the clamps. In other words: if London and Berlin really found a compromise, it would be very difficult for the others to derail the agreement.
In reality, Starmer’s visit should be seen in the context of a broader process of reconciliation between the United Kingdom and Germany, which has also seen symbolic moments, such as King Charles’ speech in German to the German Bundestag, and sees active support from the English “deep state”. Among the most worried are the French. Nicolas Baverez in the columns of the newspaper The Figaro he didn’t mince his words: for the first time since 1945, Europe’s future is now being decided without France, as symbolised by Starmer’s choice to take Scholz as his sole partner to negotiate a “nouvelle donne”, that is, a reorganisation of the balance between Great Britain and the EU after Brexit.
For now, London seems to be focusing mainly on the defense sector, and the effort is to convince Berlin to join a front that already includes the Netherlands.Scandinavian and Baltic countries, Poland and take advantage of France’s weakness. The same game, if observed through the German lens, presents a major challenge. Germany must first manage the “divergence” from Paris without fatally compromising the Franco-German axis and without clashing with London in the Baltics and Scandinavia, which remain an English (geo)political protectorate. The French leaders do not like the Scholz government’s rearmament methods, which already allocate a lot of space and resources to American F-35s at the expense of the military industry across the Alps, nor Berlin’s diplomatic offensive in Africa to prepare the ground for German industrial settlements. But to understand why the nerve is so exposed, we need to go back to 1956, that is, to the Suez Crisis that consecrated American primacy and downgraded the capitals on both sides of the Channel. The British establishment drew the opposite conclusion from the blow to that of Paris. London, in fact, chose to form a fixed pair with Washington, exercising influence “from within” on its older brother. France aimed to become the main reference of a “third pole” that would give it, on the one hand, an adequate weight on the international scene, and on the other hand allow it to overcome internal weaknesses (in the post-war period the country’s economy was still in bad shape, and it was crossed by strong tensions linked to the management of the Algerian dossier).
In the mind of General De Gaulle a nominally European doctrine took shape, in reality based on the Franco-German tandem. In France, in the internal division of taskswere responsible for high strategy, foreign affairs and defense. The Germans, on the other hand, were responsible for the economy. This aspect does not seem to escape the attention of the political-economic establishment in Berlin. However, the embrace with London would “turbocharge” the German defense sector today, which is essential for driving the battered economy of the country orphaned by the “automotive glories”, and would give it back a second privileged channel with Washington. Even Friedrich Merz, head of the CDU and with excellent chances of replacing Scholz as chancellor after the next political elections, seems to have swallowed the leaf. The shrewd politician has in fact publicly recognized that the many German “neins” in Europe have contributed to strengthening the push for Brexit in the United Kingdom, culminating in the referendum of June 2016 that sanctioned its exit from the EU. For Italy, which has a significant integration in the British defense industry and is positioning itself with the German one, the “flirts” between the two countries are promising: because without effort, by dragging, it could find itself attracted into a powerful force field: the Washington-London-Berlin-Rome quadrangle.
