Most observers across the world will be congratulating the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, on her fourth straight victory in national elections on Saturday, and breathing a provisional sigh of relief. The result, assuming DrMerkel can form a coalition with minor parties to govern, confirms stability and continuity at the heart of Europe and in the wider world at a time when outbreaks of populism and disturbing upheavals in established norms of diplomacy and politics elsewhere have combined to threaten them.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
But they will also be eyeing with disquiet the surprisingly good showing of the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (Alternative for Germany, AfD). The party, not yet five years old, but energised by a wave of disquiet over Germany's million-plus immigration intake of 2015, will be the third largest in the Bundestag. The latest count has it winning almost 13 per cent of the vote to 33 per cent for Dr Merkel's coalition, and 21 for the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD).
Some will ask: is the extreme right on the rise in Germany again, after so long? Are the early 20th century's ghosts returning to haunt the world? There is no saying, of course, but circumstances are very different now.
In the 1930s Germany's economy and its government were both weak, and its middle class destroyed, leading despairing voters to seek stability at the extremes of politics. Today Germany's economy is the mainstay of Europe; its democratic traditions, like its middle class, are stable and strong. The vote for AfD is certainly a protest, but it is possibly only that.
Dr Merkel's party markets itself as Die Mitte (the centre). Its domination of the centre ground remains unquestioned – to the point where even its centre-left opponent the SPD appeared to cede victory before the contest, so as to avoid undermining centrist consensus and giving an opening to extremism.
Mainstream German politicians on both sides today remain wary of the ghosts. But by moving her conservative coalition slightly leftwards to dominate the centre, with policies such as her generous reception of asylum-seekers and recognition of gay marriage, Dr Merkel has clearly alienated some of her traditional supporters.
While final figures are yet to be posted, she appears to have lost about 8 percentage points in electoral support, and achieved her party's worst result since the late 1940s. That looks to be a big swing. But is it?
If, as analysts have suggested, much of the support for AfD is soft – a protest against other parties rather than a positive endorsement of the new far-right alternative – Dr Merkel may be expected to bounce back. She will, however, have to spend a good deal of time and effort in her new term winning back and reassuring her disaffected supporters.
Future waves of refugees may not find Germany's borders so open or its government so welcoming. Germany may become even more assertive within a European Union which is itself being transformed by Brexit.
Dr Merkel's moderate Germany, like Emmanuel Macron's moderate France, needs a win or two here; the British will not expect much generosity when they come to negotiate the terms of their departure.
What, after all, do Europe's central economies owe Britain as it leaves them to foot the bill for the EU's perpetual outliers and mendicants? Consolidating Europe's shaky centre may cause some collateral damage.
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