First lesson: don’t trust the Germans. Theresa May needs all the advice she can get and there’s plenty about behind the scenes from many of Europe’s most senior diplomats. Those with years of EU diplomatic experience, and the scars on their backs to show it, have two very simple lessons for beginners that the prime minister should note. The first lesson is don’t trust the Germans because, as one seasoned Brussels negotiator put it: “They nearly always betray you.”David Cameron learned to his cost that promises from Angela Merkel were highly conditional and subject to being revoked at a moment’s notice if her political convenience required it. The former prime minister was humiliated, utterly and very publicly, when the German Chancellor backed out of…

Source: The Times November 17, 2016 12:02 UTC