In 2015, as the greatest refugee crisis since the Second World War unfolded, Angela Merkel was hailed as a “liberal hero” for insisting “we will manage”. Whilst other EU member states closed their borders, Germany welcomed more than a million people. Merkel’s enlightened stance, and Donald Trump’s subsequent election, saw her summarily appointed the new “leader of the free world”.
In fairness to Merkel, it was a label she immediately disavowed (Germany is both unwilling and unable to act as a global hegemon). But it was more ill-suited than many liberals realised. Merkel is, as one might expect of the leader of the Christian Democratic Union, a proud conservative. In 2010, for instance, she told party members that attempts to build a multicultural society had “utterly failed” and that those who did not accept the “Christian concept of mankind” were “in the wrong place”.
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