Wednesday 6 November was a seismic day in the politics of the west. On one side of the Atlantic, it was confirmed in the early hours of the morning that the hard-right nationalist Donald Trump had been elected president of the US; on the other side, the government running Europe’s largest economy – Germany’s traffic-light coalition of social democrats, market liberals and greens – collapsed. It could hardly have come at a worse time.

The breakdown of the feuding Berlin alliance will leave a political vacuum in Germany for months, just when the EU needs decisive leadership. Instead, the country faces months of introspective electioneering, followed by protracted coalition negotiations, with investment and public spending on hold.

Germany is already in its second year of recession. Its economic model is broken because of the end of cheap Russian gas and declining exports to China, which is increasingly an industrial competitor. Its mighty car industry is shedding jobs and shuttering factories as orders slump. The government even revived border checks within the European Schengen zone in a panicked reaction after a migrant stabbed three people to death.

Populist, Eurosceptic anti-immigration parties of the extreme right and left – opposed to support for Ukraine – are gaining ground, making the formation of stable national and regional governments increasingly difficult. Between them, the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) and a new leftist insurgent movement led by the former communist........

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