Yesterday Angela Merkel and Martin Schulz faced each other in a 95 minute debate for the German election and the subject of Brexit was not even raised once.
Some people have tried to make out that this is because the Brexit issue is trivial and unimportant in Germany, but in my view that's a stretch.
Brexit is an important issue in Germany because the nuclear "no deal" strop that the Tories keep threatening would obviously trigger significant economic fallout on the continent. However Brexit is not coming up in their election debates because the EU27 are united, their negotiating positions are clear, and both Schultz and Merkel back the EU27 negotiating stance, so there's nothing for them to actually debate.
The debate is raging on in the UK because it's increasingly obvious that the Tory Brexit position is a "back of a fag packet" shambles being negotiated by a hard-right billionaire-bankrolled and still bitterly divided political party who only achieved their "mandate" to negotiate on behalf of the entire country by lobbing a £1 billion bung at the DUP after Theresa May's ridiculously timed vanity election backfired so spectacularly.
Both Merkel and Schultz back the EU27 negotiating position on Brexit, so there's nothing for them to actually debate.
The Brexit ball is in Britain's court, and all the Germans can do is watch on to see what kind of chaotic mess we're going to make by allowing shockingly incompetent charlatans like bumbling David Davis, the disgraced Liam Fox, the offensive oaf Boris Johnson and the worst Prime Minister in living memory the power to trash our economy and scrap our rights with as little scrutiny and accountability as they think they can get away with.
All the Germans really have to debate about Brexit is whether watching the UK wilfully commit such drastic social and economic self-harm is side-splittingly hilarious, or actually pretty concerning because the blowback from Britain's self-inflicted implosion will eventually end up singeing the German economy too.
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