Angela Merkel’s coalition is in trouble. That means Europe is, too

YOU MIGHTCSUSPDCDUSPDAD think that losing over ten percentage points off your vote was a calamity. But the drubbing meted out by the voters of Bavaria to Germany’s Christian Social Union () on October 14th, which saw it lose its majority after ruling Germany’s largest state single-handedly for all but five of the past 52 years, turns out to have been only the second-nastiest beating administered that day. The Social Democrats () were battered into fifth place, lost half their support and now seem to have entered terminal decline. That is a consequence, most analysts agree, of deciding in March to enter into a second “grand coalition” (GroKo, in its German nickname), with Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats (). There is a chance that the collapse of Mrs Merkel’s government is only weeks away, with gloomy consequences for a continent grappling with Brexit, an incipient Italian-driven new euro crisis and an ever more cantankerous Russia.The result in Bavaria was not all terrible news. The Greens, who have become an economically and politically sensible centre-left alternative to the , with a much younger and more enthusiastic base of support, got a huge boost. The hard-right Alternative for Germany (f) did less well than many had feared, taking around 10% of the vote compared with the 16% or so they score in national opinion polls. But Bavaria’s election is further confirmation that all three of the GroKo parties are in deep trouble.