A brave politician

German chancellor Angela Merkel is not charismatic. Indeed her enemies have described her as boring. But what she lacks in charisma she makes up in political courage. This has been demonstrated clearly by her unflinching policy of accepting refugees in the face of a rising tide of opposition, even from within her own Christian Democrat party. It is clear that Merkel’s open-door policy is prompted more by common humanity than self-interest. However, it should be noted that Germany has an aging population. Just as in the 1960s, Germany industry, particularly the automakers, needed Turkish guest workers, so now a new intake of labor is welcomed.  Among the Syrian refugees especially, there are doctors, engineers and other members of the professional classes who will be welcomed. It must be admitted however that migrants with limited qualifications will be harder to absorb into a working world where the march of automation, with ever-more sophisticated robots, is doing away with manual labor. Even street cleaning, still the work refuge of the poorly qualified is changing. A recent exhibition showed off an autonomous road-sweeping machine, which even directed itself to a larger collection bin where it emptied its load before resuming its robotic duties. Merkel’s guts may yet cost her. It is all too rare for politicians in democracies to take a principled stand. Conscious of their electorates, the movers and shakers of the political world always seek to ride the tide of public opinion. In normal times, it can be argued that this is as it should be. However, when in periods of stress, when the popular mood heads in the direction of intolerance and bigotry, it takes a brave elected leader to stick to his or her guns. In France we have seen the Republican Party of Nicolas Sarkozy trimming its message to try and win back voters lured by the blatant racism of the National Front. The “If you can’t beat them, join them” approach is reprehensible. It also says a lot about Sarkozy himself, a Jew whose family were once migrants who benefited from France’s liberal approach to those who sought asylum on its shores. Merkel was born and brought up in East Germany, where intolerance and state surveillance were rife. Indeed many of her fellow countrymen from the East are now to the fore in rabid demonstrations against migrants. Yet the chancellor herself has refused to bend, despite the rising xenophobic tide and just as significantly, urgent warnings from some of her senior CDU colleagues. Merkel’s challenge is the greater because of the chaotic response of other members of the European Union. The recent summit in Brussels, which should have focused on the migrant issue, was dominated by the UK’s renegotiation of its EU role, which allows it to opt out of a range of European initiatives, not least its continued refusal to accept more than 20,000 Syrian migrants a year. Merkel may yet pay for her courage with her political life. But when the history of the disaster of the bloody Syrian Assad regime comes to be written, she will surely deserve an honored position. No other European politician has been prepared to put their careers on the line. This ought to be a matter of the greatest shame, not simply to the politicians themselves, but to the electorates whose shortsighted prejudice has driven them into bigotry.