What are Britain, France and Italy to do about Germany?

Under the guise of a review of two books on Germany, the Charlemagne column in tomorrow's Economist Magazine raises the reality of German power in today's EU. Read here.

On the week of the funeral of Margaret Thatcher, this seems most appropriate. Norman Tebbit, one of her closest ministerial colleagues, finely tuned in to her beliefs, in his comment last weekend for the Mail, blamed those in her Party who had her removed as working for Brussels, many suspect that is in fact merely code for German influence and objectives.

The 26 other countries of the EU will eventually have to decide their own attitudes to German control of their former nations, many European citizens whose forebears fought and emigrated to avoid such a fate, are likely to be unhappy at that prospect.

The leaders of the larger non-German EU ex-nations have a formidable problem to face, Italy actually physically lacks a leader as well as the character attributes one associates with such a position, as seems to be the case for both Britain and France. Nevertheless something has to be faced, we cannot go on much longer with children being allowed to starve in Greece, as was reported in the New York Times yesterday!