Merkel and Boris need one another, but charm alone won’t cut it

What kind of reception can Boris Johnson expect when he rolls up for dinner in Berlin with Angela Merkel? Right now, Brexit may not even be the German Chancellor’s biggest headache. The Italian government has just collapsed; her own coalition is unpopular and fissiparous; and the Poles are about to present her with a £777 billion bill for reparations at next week’s 80th anniversary of the Nazi invasion of their country.

So is it awfully nice of Angela to fit Boris into her diary? Not really. They need one another. Britain and Germany are bound together by the closest possible economic, cultural and historical ties. Even now that they seem locked in a life-and-death struggle over the future of Europe, the fates of these two nations are inseparable. It may suit each side to pretend to be Sherlock Holmes, while the other is Professor Moriarty, but if they plunge into the Reichenbach Falls, they go down together.

A good example of this is the status of the two capitals. Each is unusual: Berlin is poorer than the German average, while London is far richer than its hinterland. London is so dominant, indeed, not only in the UK but also in the EU, that it has drawn Berlin into its orbit.

In the all-important tech sector, American and Asian investors have poured $14.6 billion into Britain over the past five years, compared to just $2.5 billion into Germany. But because Berlin has a cheap, cheerful and above all cool image, it now hosts a sizeable number of British and other geeks who have moved there from London and are creating thousands of jobs for their German contemporaries. Without this prosperous and entrepreneurial young community, who inhabit an English-speaking bubble in the heart of Germany, Mrs Merkel’s shiny new capital would be merely an expensive white elephant.

Understandably, the Chancellor fears that a “disorderly” no-deal Brexit would put paid to this burgeoning, mutually beneficial Anglo-German symbiosis. It’s not just the overwhelming trade surplus with Britain, without which the EU’s “Franco-German engine” — most of which is really “Made in Germany” — would sputter to a halt. The loss of freedom of movement threatens Europe’s hopes of competing with Asia and the US in nurturing new technology entrepreneurs. Cutting off the Continent from its London hub would be the equivalent of the US losing California as well as New York.

Like President Macron, Mrs Merkel finds Boris Johnson hard to read. They both misinterpret his boisterous manner as a lack of seriousness. Yet, as the London-based French journalist Anne-Elisabeth Moutet argues, unlike the French, who can’t be bothered with his very English sense of humour, the Germans take Boris seriously. “I hate to say this,” she wrote in the Daily Telegraph (behind a paywall), “but it’s Merkel and von der Leyen who may give decent Brexit concessions to Boris, not Macron.”

There will, then, be some tough talking in the Bundeskanzleramt, but at least there’s a chance that it will be constructive. Mrs Merkel does not share Donald Tusk’s dismissive attitude. For her, there’s a deal to be done: the British concede freedom of movement, the EU drops the backstop.

This German Chancellor has already seen four British Prime Ministers come and go; she will relish the challenge of a fifth. Boris, too, will see cultivating her as crucial to making a success of Brexit — and surviving in office. His visit to the Élysée Palace, by contrast, will be a courtesy call on a President who is inclined to be discourteous.

Though Angela Merkel has never had children, she is now Europe’s Oma (Grandma). Boris will lay on the charm with a trowel, but it won’t work unless he has something new to offer. He had better make his gift a good one — or Oma will not be amused.