Brandmauer.

I am far from a polyglot and, truth be told, my linguistic abilities extend no further than the Grade 2 I scraped in Standard Grade French thirty years ago.

‘Brandmauer’ though, I can tell you, is German for ‘firewall’, and in political terms it is shorthand for the Grand Coalition between the centre-left SPD and the centre-right CDU/CSU. We have seen this Grand Coalition between Germany’s main parties three times now – twice under Angela Merkel, and now again under new Chancellor Friedrich Merz.

The purpose of the Brandmauer is to lock out a force considered by the mainstream parties to be so undesirable that the political nuclear button must be pressed. In 2005, under Ms Merkel, the imperative was to neuter the PDS – the successor to the Communist rulers of East Germany. Now, two decades on, the Brandmauer protects against Alice Weidel’s AFD.

The Grand Coalition under Angela Merkel continued under new Chancellor Friedrich Merz

The Grand Coalition is now so normal in Germany that it has its own portmanteau – the Groko (Große Koalition). Before it happened, though, it would generally have been considered unthinkable. Not worth writing about, talking about or thinking about.

Closer to home, we have seen a similar situation in Ireland. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael may be ideologically similar, but as the parties on opposite sides of the Irish Civil War, the antipathy from that island’s troubled history runs deep.

The very notion of a Grand Coalition was ridiculous until a force so ostensibly menacing, in the form of Sinn Féin, became so strong that a momentous response was required. The 2020 and 2024........

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