“We want the Community to move forward as twelve… Europe is strongest when it grows through willing co-operation and practical measures, not compulsion or bureaucratic dreams.” – Margaret Thatcher in the House of Commons (1990)
“Nobody in Europe will be abandoned. Nobody in Europe will be excluded. Europe only succeeds if we work together.” – Angela Merkel in the Bundestag (2010)
Leo Tolstoy began Anna Karenina with one of the famous opening lines in literature—“all happy families are alike, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” However, if one were to look at all successful, “happy”, female heads of state, two figures would stand out: Margaret Hilda Thatcher and Angela Dorothea Merkel. Yet the two could not have been more different, both in terms of style and substance. While Thatcher reveled in being dramatic and forceful, Merkel has made a political living out of being low-key and consistent. Thatcher staked her eleven-year premiership and absolute domination of the Conservative Party on her refusal to agree to the single currency suggested by the Delors Commission. Merkel—who enjoyed the highest approval ratings of any Chancellor in postwar Germany and governed an economically resurgent colossus—had to lean on both Christian Democrats and opposition Members of Parliament to formulate a European bailout package that did not compromise the monetary stability of her own country.
Read Full Article »