AfD doesn’t need to win the next election to trigger a meltdown – just keep its national support rising toward the 25 per cent mark, where the mathematics of building stable coalition governments stops working.
Just as its energy dependence on Russia cannot be reversed overnight, decades of drift into quasi-pacifism reflect a deeply embedded outlook.
Ministers must grasp that this new one will be even more disposed to conduct its foreign policy through the EU.
A traffic light coalition? A Jamaica coalition? Who knows? What’s certain is that the CDU/CSU is struggling amidst a fragmenting landscape.
A Green Minister-President has governed Baden-Württemberg in coalition with the CDU for more than a decade, implementing a pro-business agenda.