The new German grand coalition will be dull and dreary
There’s no success like failure, as Bob Dylan once observed. Nearly six months after Germans went to the polls and gave the country’s coalition government a bloody nose, the same two parties are back in government in another ‘grand coalition’ – yet another unholy alliance of Christian Democrats and Social Democrats, with Angela Merkel at the helm again. Haven’t we been here several times before? Well, yes and no. Merkel’s centre-right CDU agreed a coalition deal with the soft-left SPD last month, but SPD protocol demanded they put this deal to their 464,000 members, and after an all-night count the result of that postal vote was announced this morning. As
