My meeting with Europe’s new Iron Lady

‘Look at the dates.’ That’s what I am told as I enter the State Elders Room in Tallinn. I’m here to interview the woman dubbed Europe’s new Iron Lady – Estonia’s Prime Minister Kaja Kallas. The walls in the room between her office and the cabinet room are lined with portraits. A small plaque beneath each one records the dates of their birth and, more significantly, death. The first shows that its subject died in 1941. The next I notice also reads 1941. So too the third. And the fourth. The story is soon clear. Each of those elders of this now proud independent wealthy European state died fighting in what they call here the communist terror. This country is haunted by its past and the refusal of so many around the world to believe it could, it would, happen again.

Prime Minister Kallas is one of those who can say ‘I told you so’ although she’s much too polite to do so.