The AfD’s unlikely conversion to Merkelism

It is hard to keep count of the German orthodoxies that have died a long overdue death on the battlefields of eastern Ukraine.

Annäherung durch Handel, the claim that government lobbying for German industry in Moscow and Beijing would moderate those capitals by tying them to our trade interests. That didn’t work.

Building a gas pipeline from St Petersburg based on a mission to make up for historic war crimes, even after the Russian army had annexed 10,000 square miles of a neighbouring country? It turns out that pacifist gestures are only taken seriously at one end of the pipeline.

Refusing to send weapons to a war zone over fears that you might end up escalating the conflict? Well, brutal autocrats don’t need much encouragement if they plan on flattening a city.

Less than a year after Merkel retired while still with sky high polling figures, the world that the woman known as Mutti (mummy) built for her voters has collapsed under its own contradictions.