A Short and True Melodrama in One Act
A Short and True Melodrama in One Act
Starring Gordon “Superman” Brown, Angela “Prudent” Merkel and Super-Sarko
playing ‘Saviour of the World’, the ‘Former Jilted Lover’ and the ‘Bed-Hopper’
Gordon Brown (UK PM): “We saved the world!”
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Peer Steinbrück (BRD Fin. Min.): “Crass Keynesianism!”
Brown: “My moves are ambitious and co-ordinated…”
Steinbrück: “Tossing off billions…”
Merkel (BRD Ch.): “I will be Prudent!”
Content from our partners
Sarkozy (Fr. Pres.): “Oh, zut alors! Tu es Madame Non!”
Brown: “… but you won’t follow my brilliant example!”
Merkel: “I certainly won’t get pregnant with debt just to please you!”
Steinbrück: “Rightz! No sliding down ze moral slippery slope into recession. No dropping of standardz, like VAT ratez: are you really going to seduce the bride into buying a DVD player because it now costs £39.10 instead of £39.90? Answer that! What? Who’s saying Germany is going down by 4% in 2009? I don’t believe it. Zat’s not in my plan! ”
Brown: “It wasn’t in mine either. I thought I had got rid of ‘Boom and Bust’, but then everything went wrong in America, for which I am not responsible!”
Sarkozy: “My beloved bride [he meant Pride, as in France] has just got pregnant with my €26 Billion Infusion and she’s not complaining!”
Ms Ulrike Guérot (Berlin Head of EC Foreign Relations): “Cars are emotional here. Italians like your bride do clothes. We do cars. We can’t let that fall apart!”
Steinbrück: “I vill balanz my budgetz.” He fumbles for his portable chess-set. “I betz half a case of wine zat I will do this by 2011!”
Brown: “In time for my 2012 Olympics, where our gold reserves will rise at a faster rate than yours!”
Merkel (sounding like the great she-elephant of yore, Lady Thatcher): “We Germans must take our Verantwortung very seriously, like the good responsible Swabian housewife that I aim to be. We cannot live beyond our means in the long run.”
Brown: “In the long run we are all dead!”
Merkel: “We are not going to participate in this senseless race for billions.”
Steffen Kampeter (German MP quoted in Der Spiegel): “After years of lecturing us how we need to share in the gains of uncontrolled financial market, New Labour politicians can’t now expect us to share in their losses.”
John Jungclaussen (UK Correspondent for Die Zeit): “These pompous, hyper-active, noisy people in London telling us we’re not doing enough, not daring enough, not moving fast enough…”
Guérot: “You’re going to have an 8% deficit in the UK, you’re renationalizing the Banks, refusing to lower taxes: it’s very scary for Germany.”
Brown: “Who’s playing internal politics now? Hey, that’s my game!”
Jungclaussen, sighing wistfully: “… Germany is so reticent to move, slower to
change. Britain has the ability to change on the hoof. Achtung! They still
have their own currency!”
José Manuel Barroso (EU Pres.): “Don’t worry. People in high places in Britain want to join the Euro, but I will not name them. When they join we’ll shut them up for good with our democratic deficit, and then strangle their economy as without the Pound they cannot do anything without our say-so and then they will be at our mercy! Ha, ha, ha! Ho, ho, ho!”
Our man in the audience says: “This cacophonous non-debate might be funny if it wasn’t all true – yes, these are actual quotes, with a touch of added prurient sauce thrown in for the festive season.
“And one has to sympathise with the German position as, ever since reunification, they have swallowed the economic medicine in doses that would not be accepted in the Anglo-Saxon world; and as for the UK, its economy is more inter-twined with the US than the EU.
“Those who think the UK will join the Euro are about as bonkers as those who think the Euro will stay together, as Germany strengthens and all the others weaken. The structure of the Euro was never designed to cope with a global crisis. And guess who will come out of this recession quicker?
“Roll on Sterling, and bring back the Deutschmark, say I, before the whole common currency project is pissed away into the Eurinal, along with recovery.”
