Ascendant Greens will turn Germany and Europe upside down

With Germany and southern Europe swinging in opposite directions, sharing a monetary union is about to become even harder

Expect 130km speed signs across the German Autobahns, with 30km per hour becoming the general rule in all towns. Expect a ban on sales of combustion engines by 2030, and a regulatory squeeze on overpowered trophy cars. Expect a halt to domestic short-haul flights wherever trains are viable. 

Prepare for a German carbon tax of €60 a tonne in two years, and perhaps a wealth tax, a Tobin tax, a supertax on high incomes, and an end to corporate tax deductibility for pay above €500,000. Dream no longer of an EU-US trade deal (TTIP) or any other trade deal unless the ideological principles of German ecologists are satisfied.

All of this is in the draft manifesto of Die Grünen, the German greens, and right now there is no conceivable combination in which they will not be a central pillar of the next coalition. The likelihood of a Green chancellor has soared after the Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) picked the back-slapping Armin Laschet as the “continuity candidate” in a leadership stitch-up – blocking Bavaria’s disruptive rising star, Markus Söder, so clearly preferred by the grassroots and the German people. 

To insist on Mr Laschet was a fateful decision for a stale exhausted party so badly in need of a makeover after 16 years in power: an era when Germany began to rest on its laurels, neglecting digital technology, cutting public investment to the bone in pursuit of balanced-budget shibboleths, doubling-down on 20th century industries…

Annalena Baerbock, the trampolinist and newly chosen Green candidate, has vaulted into the lead at 28pc following her party’s smooth leadership contest. It is a movement on the march, hungry for power. “They are disciplined and extremely well-run,” said Giles Dickson, head of renewable lobby WindEurope.

The hapless Mr Laschet has collapsed by six points to 21pc. The Social Democrats (SPD) have crashed to 13pc and risk going the way of the French Socialists. The two great Volksparteien that have run the country since the Second World War cannot muster more than 34pc between them. The Germany that most of us have known all our lives is about to change in radical and unpredictable ways.