The adage that no news is good news has rarely proved so apt. In a week when both France and Italy have demonstrated the depressing opposition of voters to even moderate reform, almost nothing has been heard from Germany, the largest economy in Europe and one whose intractable resistance to change had marked out the country as the Sick Man of Europe. But in the six months since Angela Merkel, after a lacklustre campaign and protracted political wrangling, took office as head of a grand coalition government, Germany has steadily, and quietly, begun to recover.

And as Italy looks into the abyss of a stagnant economy, mounting debt and political stalemate, and France marks time while a lame-duck president clings to power, the stirrings of a new optimism are sweeping Germany. The raw economic figures are, at last, improving. Economic growth is rising, inflation is falling and business confidence is recovering. Consumer spending is up, trade union militancy is down and painful economic rationalisation, the rock on which the previous administration was shipwrecked, is gradually, and by stealth, being implemented.

As a result, Frau Merkel is enjoying almost unprecedented popularity, with ratings hovering around 70 per cent. The woman whom many dismissed last year as a political outsider and whose failure to win a clear victory for the Christian Democrats dismayed even her ardent supporters, is proving a formidable operator. Perhaps the very weakness of her hand and voters’ low expectancy have helped. She took power in the teeth of barely concealed opposition from party barons. She formed a coalition with the Social Democrats, who agreed to share power only grudgingly. She hurt her own commitment to reform with campaign gaffes by her economics adviser. And she lacked the charisma to inspire voters whose despondency could not be lifted even by the showmanship of its former Chancellor.

Already some Germans are comparing her to Margaret Thatcher, a label that she has consistently rejected. It is a misleading comparison. Frau Merkel is instinctively a consensus politician, one who prefers to avoid high-profile clashes and provocative statements. She has insisted that Germany’s situation is very different from that of Britain in 1979 — and she is right. By last autumn, almost everyone in Germany realised that reform was needed, that the country was becoming uncompetitive and that labour market rigidities were costing jobs. She has not needed a confrontation with the trade unions: the spectre of losing jobs to Eastern Europe has been enough to still their claims. And she took over a country that had reached its nadir and was ready for a tentative return to initiative, enterprise and the work ethic.

The Merkel Miracle, as some perhaps over-enthusiastic Germans are already calling it, is the revival of national self-confidence. That has come partly from the reforms already implemented, although the real challenges must still be tacked. It has come also from an adroit foreign policy that has mended fences with Washington, maintained relations with Russia and shown statesmanship over the European budget. And it has been influenced by other factors — a German Pope and the approaching World Cup. Most of all, however, it has been created by the steady, low-key, unflamboyant work of a woman who has already far outstripped expectations.