It is worth noting the lack of a German, and therefore European, consensus on the foreign policy challenges facing the West, particularly on Russia and China.
And if Germany’s Greens are in government after the federal election, they will be inclined to help him.
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.
Here in Britain, the two main parties are being punished by voters for tearing up their Brexit commitments.
What would the lesser men who would bring her down have done: put migrants on sealed trains in their tens of thousands and send them – where, exactly?
The German Chancellor was stronger then than she is now. And there’s no guarantee that any compromise she might push would work.
Merkel is threatened. Macron is outraged. Brussels is paralysed. And all three trends are taken by their opponents as signs that they are winning.
The German Chancellor faces a rebellion from her Bavarian allies on the question of immigration – and is pleading for more time before the EU summit.
Merkel has appalled her own followers by making sweeping concessions to the Social Democrats.
If both of the main parties remain locked together in an unpopular pact, it creates more space in which new challengers can grow.
The German consensus which placed no significant party to the right of the CDU, thus bolstering it as a governing force, is breaking down.
There have been some recent positive signs from the ECJ that EU states are within their rights already to curb blatant benefit abuse by migrants.