Angela’s ashes

‘This is not about whether Mrs Merkel stays as chancellor next week or not,’ said Xavier Bettel, the Prime Minister of Luxembourg, as he came out of an emergency summit on immigration last weekend. He was joking. That was exactly what the meeting had been about, and everybody there knew it. The summit was Operation Save Mutti. Their mission: to stop Merkel’s government collapsing by thrashing out a tough stance on immigration to assuage her critics. It’s quite a turnaround. Once, Merkel was queen of Europe, now she’s a beggar. Suddenly, European politics has changed beyond recognition.

Merkel may, by now, regret standing for re-election last year. There was a suspicion that she only did so to put things right in Euroland and ensure the history books would commend her open-door policy towards refugees. If so, that was a catastrophic misjudgment. The tide has now turned on migration — in Germany and across Europe.