Shock Development - A European Leader With Brains

It's not our leader, of course.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has exhibited infinitely more sense than the three prize plonkers who met in London today.

Brown, Sarkozy and Barroso got together to salivate over the utterly crazy "plan" (if that's not too grand a word for it, which it probably is) to throw €200bn into the raging inferno disaster area that is the European economy. The Germans, quite understandably, do not want to know.

Merkel, it appears, wasn't invited to this madcap resurrection of discredited Keynesian lunacy, for the very good reason that the spendaholics knew she wouldn't pay the entrance fee. This is good news for the Germans, and very bad news for us.

As discussed on this blog a couple of weeks ago, Barroso's brainwave involves a few countries (mainly us) coming up with money they haven't got, to give to the European Commission, who will use it to pay for things like loft insulation in Slovakia and improved broadband access in Latvia, in the hope that this will somehow save the millions of jobs which are currently under threat in Europe in the retail, finance and manufacturing sectors.

Not surprisingly, it appears to be taking Barroso some time to organise the whip round. The Scottish Stalinist is, of course, chomping at the bit to put his hands into our pockets, but others seem a little more reluctant. The longer it goes on, of course, the more expensive it will finally be for us, owing to the fact that the pound is dropping like sales of Irish pork. The "stimulus" that was valued at £170bn two weeks ago is now costed at £174bn. And the more countries that knock it back, the more it's going to cost us.

Germany's finance minister, Peer Steinbrück, put it beautifully - "Just because all the lemmings have chosen the same path, it doesn't automatically make that path the right one." Why can't we have finance ministers like that ? Such imagery, so appropriate.

Critics of Germany claim it has far more budgetary room for manoeuvre than any other EU country. Well, of course it has; Germany hasn't landed itself up to its eyes in debt, has it ? Rocket science it ain't.

By the way, I see from Mark Mardell's blog that the Germans are allowed to drink mulled wine while they shop, free from interference from the kind of assorted fun fascists who operate in places like Norwich. That's something else they've got right over there.

Meanwhile, back in the UK, see you at the bottom of the cliff.