Political notes

Party conferences these days aren’t really conferences at all. They are spectacles: displays of mass solidarity on the way to triumph—or disaster. And, of course, orchestrated charisma-fests. See how David Cameron juts out a leadership-jaw, cajoling, bossing, joking with the audience and (more importantly) the cameras. A shadow cabinet member told me that watching his boss at conference was like “watching someone having sex with the delegates.” Figuratively, I take it.

No one has accused Gordon Brown of flirting with his audiences. The PM suffers from a weird anti-charisma. The qualities cited as his strengths by those who know him well—breadth of vision, passion and force of personality—all too often disappear into a black hole of long, repetitive sentences and rigor mortis body language. But Brown too accepts the diktat of charisma. Spin doctors have come and gone trying to convince us that Mr B is more interesting than we think. And Nick Clegg, for all his intellect and charm, also tries hard to compensate for his deficit of presence. Yet he remains “the man who isn’t there,” says a Lib Dem frontbencher, collecting triple points on his disloyalty card.

Packing my bags for the annual mating display of the parties in conference season set me thinking about how much we take the charisma battle for granted in British politics. As Samuel L Jackson observes in the film Pulp Fiction: “personality goes a long way.” We implicitly measure our leaders against the other great personalities of the era: Obama and Sarkozy. But having also spent time recently watching Angela Merkel’s election campaign, I was equally struck that one of the most powerful women in the world is a largely charisma-free zone who has made anti-personality politics work for her.



Frau Merkel has always prospered by inspiring low expectations, only to greatly exceed them. She was a quietly spoken east German opposition figure in 1989, and then deputy press spokesman for the Eastern Christian Democrats in the run up to unification the following year. We got used to unthinkables in that heady period, but if you had told me that the woman mocked as the “milkmaid”—at the time she seemed provincial, earnest and lisping—would be chancellor of the unified Germany in only a few years, I simply would not have taken the bet, on any odds.

Today’s Merkel is a quite different creature to the blushing woman in long skirts, umgestylt (meaning “made over”) with carefully groomed hair and some frankly alarming mustard and turquoise suits. In Helmut Kohl, the unified fatherland found a father figure. In Angela Merkel it has a strict but humane mother. She has preserved something kindly from her family life and her background outside career politics. The word most used of her is “natural.” Compared to the cut and thrust of British politics, with its relentless parading of leadership, Frau Merkel is a subtle national presence, but nonetheless a strong one.

Her record has its drawbacks. She has notably failed to deliver on the early promise of a German progressive conservatism, encumbered by her divided grand coalition with the opposition Social Democratics, and unable to swing German public opinion behind reforming their high-cost state. It’s even conceivable that the far left’s rise as a protest vote could deny her a workable coalition in the general election. Though often suspected of turning to the far right when times are tough, Germans are instead more likely today to grasp at socialist straws.

Yet, whatever the outcome, Frau Merkel is still the figure Germans would identify as the best person to lead the country, head and shoulders above others on personal merit and trust. In a direct mandate for the top job, unencumbered by party horse-trading, she would win hands down.

Brown should be so lucky. What can he and the other British contenders learn from her? That less is sometimes more, if you use a sense of steadiness at the centre to contrast with the sound and fury of day-to-day fights. The number of matters on which Frau Merkel does not pronounce is remarkable by the standards of British leaders. When she does make a public stand—on the determination to bale out the car-maker Opel, for instance—her voice carries, and the public places trust in her. Her scientific background is the other asset everyone who has worked with her points out, giving her a shrewd antennae for good and bad ideas. Cameron, who can’t be faulted for laid back charisma, could learn from Merkel’s unashamed seriousness.

Gordon Brown has suffered not just because he isn’t an entertainer (like Cameron or Blair) but because he doesn’t inspire a sense of comfort either. Merkel, on the other hand, is a good lesson in choosing what you want to be, and sticking with it. This is what helped make the milkmaid from Mecklenburg the most powerful woman in Europe. Charisma is a gift: but it isn’t everything.