Predictably, his words were dismissed as inflammatory: Verena Hubertz of the Social Democrats' parliamentary group said the “bizarre speech was more like a beer tent speech than an executive of a Dax-listed company”, while Sandra Detzer of the Greens said criticising politicians “undermines the prestige of our political culture and the German economy”.
Well, maybe. But Weimer's real sin was the kind of plainspokenness that was so familiar to British business leaders before they got caught up in woke posturing and stuck in left-wing big-state clichés. And Weimer was absolutely right: the German economy is paying the price for a decade of policy mistakes and a complacent assumption that 20th-century heavy industry could last forever.
Under the leadership of the overrated Chancellor Angela Merkel, who was praised by the Remain establishment but left a disastrous legacy, Germany made two major policy mistakes.
First, Germany's economic model is based on cheap Russian gas to fuel an industrial machine built on energy-hungry chemicals and cars (one BASF factory uses more gas than the entirety of Switzerland), German nuclear plants are closed on a whim, fracking is ignored despite Germany having an abundance of shale oil and gas, and wind and solar power are not built quickly enough to replace it.
