Timing is everything in politics and it sometimes is a case of knowing when to leave the stage.

The scheduling of Angela Merkel's set piece at Davos this year – a two-hander with Davos supremo Klaus Schwab – looked less than ideal from her point of view.

Mario Draghi would be on his feet in Frankfurt as the German chancellor finished her tour de horizon in a session entitled Global Responsibilities in a Digital Age.

It looked next to impossible for the German leader to avoid comment on whatever transpired regarding risk-sharing, which she must have known was not going to go her way.

But thanks to some clever MC work by Schwab, the chancellor was done, dusted and being escorted through the lobby by the time Draghi was making history.

Black and white

Merkel did managed to get some retaliation in first. Fielding a more general question on European stability, she noted, “I think experience tells us that there is very rarely a black-and-white solution” before going on to remind us all that “now is the time to do your homework on fiscal consolidation”.

“I think it is most important that we are ever more stringent [in implementing reform] rather than buy time,” she counselled.