Would a “grand coalition” in Berlin really be a recipe for paralysis? In a federal system some arrangement of the sort is always possible. The federal government has only limited power and effectiveness over the German economy as a whole, and good or bad provincial leadership shows up. On the whole the succession Länder in the east suffered from the rule of the second-rate Christian Democrats elected, somewhat surprisingly, in 1990.

In fact, if the present crisis has any longer-term lessons, it is that the German CDU may be on the line. It could follow its Italian counterpart into the shadows, should its social role become eclipsed by its need to secure gains for its big-business backers. In solidly “black” Bavaria its Christian Social Union (CSU) ally lost 9% of its vote; perhaps because Merkel was female, Ossi, Protestant and divorced – but perhaps also because the Bavarians took the “German Thatcher” label seriously and feared that the future of the CSU would be as dire as that of the Tories.

III

The balance of the Gerhard Schröder years is reasonably positive. Even the unemployment comparison with the United Kingdom looks marginally better if one counts into the British performance undeclared “sickies” (those off work through incapacity benefit – running at perhaps 7% against 2%) and part-time workers (25% against 15%). The Greens, in particular, have produced some tough performers in foreign minister Joschka Fischer and food minister Renate Künast, who hasn't feared to take on the powerful farmers' lobby.

The east German problem is sui generis, though the creation of die Linke may actually help its integration. The problem has been an economy, before 1989 secretly enmeshed with that of the west, which ought to have been allowed a “privileged partnership” as the strongest part of east Europe, but instead – as a panic response to migration, political rivalry, and the threat of a Russian collapse – was integrated on terms which wiped out most of its own industries (producing reliable and cheap if unsophisticated goods) without having introduced an effective service sector. Such a possibility ought to be a priority for the new regime and, if powerfully developed, ought to soak up much surplus labour.

Germany remains strong in manufacturing, invention and research. If it's possible to rescue an imperilled world by technical means, it is possible it will happen here before ever it does in Blair and Brown's “nation of shoppers”. We must never forget that.