Anglo-German sportsmanship, from Wembley to Chequers

Happy days are here again. The Wonder of Wembley has blown away all melancholy thoughts and the exaltation will linger, at least for a season. Whatever else happens this summer, England’s triumph on the football field has given a nation still divided by Brexit and Covid something to unite around and to be proud of. The names of Raheem Sterling, Harry Kane, Gareth Southgate and the rest will be inscribed in the collective memory of a new generation, just as those of Geoff Hurst, Bobby Moore and Alf Ramsey were for their grandparents in 1966. As for football: the game that had been so nearly ruined by greed just a few weeks ago is beautiful once more.

What makes this victory so sweet? Not revenge, certainly: the resentments of a postwar England that felt it had won the war but lost the peace are long gone. Neither is there much sign here of those sentiments so foreign to the English that they must be denoted by words borrowed from other languages: schadenfreude, chauvinism and xenophobia. No: the dominant feeling towards Germany is respect. The mighty are fallen, certainly; but not without putting up a tremendous fight. Without the prowess of the England defenders, who wore down the Germans for three quarters of the game, without Jordan Pickford’s genius in goal, the miracle of the final minutes would have been impossible. As in 1966, luck played its part, too: Thomas Muller missed a great chance to equalise. But nobody can deny that Löw’s lions, several of them nearing the end of distinguished careers, gave their all. Germany will need to rebuild its team almost from scratch and, as history has repeatedly demonstrated, this is an art in which they excel. They will be back.

What should give us most satisfaction is that what could have been a grudge match was not marred by bad behaviour. Yes, there was a burst of “Ten German bombers” chanted by a few of the England supporters, but given the ugliness of post-Brexit politics, rancour was remarkable for its absence.

While the British and Germans have, as I have often reiterated in TheArticle, as much or more in common than any two nations in Europe, the determination of leaders on both sides to weaponise Brexit has obscured our shared interests. The EU’s dogged determination to prove that only blockheads leave their bloc, combined with the equally stubborn British desire to demonstrate the opposite, has created new national stereotypes and mythologies to replace the worn-out wartime ones. The pandemic has added an extra competitive edge to the Anglo-German relationship.

During the first wave of Covid, when the UK struggled to cope, there was a good deal of one-upmanship on the other side of the North Sea. Later, the British vaccination programme aroused grudging envy in Germany, whose Vorsprung durch Technik had been held back by bungling in Brussels. Now a new bone of contention has arisen: the Delta (Indian) variant is dominant in the UK, but not yet in Germany. To keep it that way, Berlin is bent on forcing its EU partners (some of which have, like the UK but unlike Germany, high vaccination rates) to use quarantine to keep British tourists out of Europe. What is the point of lifting Covid restrictions here on July 19, just in time for the school holidays, if the great British public is to be denied its chance to celebrate the end of the pandemic in the Mediterranean sun?

As freedom day approaches, Boris Johnson knows he needs to act fast. By good fortune, Angela Merkel is expected at Chequers on Friday, adamant that visitors from der Insel should be banished from the EU, despite the damage that compulsory quarantine would do to the ailing economies of southern countries from Iberia and Italy to Greece. If they refuse to comply, she is even ready to impose similar restrictions on German travellers returning from the Mediterranean. The Delta variant is so dangerous, Berlin believes, that the tourist euro must be deployed to outweigh the tourist pound. The British vaccination triumph may have reduced the Covid mortality rate here to negligible levels, but in Germany they are taking no chances. With an election looming in September, Mrs Merkel cannot risk another wave of coronavirus, with all the disruption and unpopularity that a return to lockdown would inevitably entail.

So the stage is set for Round Two of yesterday’s England-Germany match, this time not in the glare of Wembley stadium but in the intimacy of the conference room at Chequers. Somehow, the Prime Minister and his team have to come up with a compromise that the German Chancellor can live with. This time, it is not a zero-sum game: what is needed is a win-win outcome. Science is on our side: by August, experts predict that the Delta variant will have spread across the Continent regardless of quarantine. It is also turning out to be less deadly than was feared — provided that the vulnerable are vaccinated. Germany is only weeks behind the UK, so these talks are about delaying the advance of Delta cases until second jabs have gone into German arms, without punishing the British for their success and provoking a rebellion among Club Med countries too. With goodwill on both sides, it should not be beyond the wit of officials to achieve this delicate balance between British and German interests.

Of course, personalities and prestige matter too. Boris Johnson may not be everyone’s idea of a gentleman, but he knows enough not to rub up his guest the wrong way, let alone to rub in her country’s defeat. He is not going to greet her (as some of the British press would doubtless like) whistling: “So who do you think you are kidding, Mrs Merkel?”

The aim of this game will be mutual magnanimity. The PM’s task is to persuade the Chancellor that she can afford to let the ordinary people on both sides of the Channel enjoy the summer of 2021 without jeopardising her country’s health or her party’s prospects. A deal is there to be done. The question is: will the sportsmanship shown by both teams last night at Wembley be in evidence on Friday at Chequers?

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