This is just plain embarrassing. Now even the Germans are mocking us – and they’ve done so twice!

Once over the arrest of Damian Green, as German CDU MPs released this statement:

We are deeply shocked by the arrest of an opposition Member of Parliament in Britain and the use of counter-terrorism police in doing so. Damian Green is a colleague and friend of the German CDU.

As fellow Members of the German Bundestag and the European Parliament, we believe the role of Members of Parliament in carrying out their duties in a democracy must be vigorously upheld and defended.

Britain’s democracy and Parliament is admired across the world. We are astonished that an opposition member can be arrested in this way, and that the British police can enter the British Parliament to search an MP’s office without a warrant.

In Germany such a procedure would be unacceptable. As members of Parliament in a fellow democracy, we express our strong support for Mr Green in this ordeal and his right to do the job he was elected to do.

And now over the government’s “crass” cut in VAT, with the German finance minister, Peer Steinbrück saying:

We have no idea how much of that stores will pass on to customers. Are you really going to buy a DVD player because it now costs £39.10 instead of £39.90? All this will do is raise Britain’s debt to a level that will take a whole generation to work off…

The same people who would never touch deficit spending are now tossing around billions. The switch from decades of supply-side politics all the way to a crass Keynesianism is breathtaking. When I ask about the origins of the crisis, economists I respect tell me it is the credit-financed growth of recent years and decades. Isn’t this the same mistake everyone is suddenly making again, under all the public pressure?

Thanks to Labour, we are the victim of mockery from the Germans of all people. When will Brown and Darling finally wake up to the fact that rather than saving the world, they are dooming Britain? Hopefully before it’s too late – though somehow I doubt it.