Since the fall of 2013, Germany has been governed by a grand coalition led by the Christian Democrats under Angela Merkel and including as junior partner the Social Democrats under Sigmar Gabriel. Arguably the union of these parties was nothing more than the formalization of a cohabitation that had followed the end of the first grand coalition of the new century in 2009.

Now that the opposition in the Bundestag has been reduced to a tiny and politically dispersed minority, it seems not much of an exaggeration to consider the government firmly in the hands of a centrist national unity party into which the two former Volksparteien have peacefully dissolved.

What is remarkable is how happy the two parties are with their reunion and how stable their share in the vote has remained since 2009: the CDU/CSU attracting roughly forty percent of the electorate (at steadily declining rates of turnout), and the SPD being stuck at around twenty-five percent, a result that was considered catastrophic in 2009 when it was attributed to having been the smaller party in a Merkel cabinet. Now the SPD seems content with having ceased to be in serious competition for the chancellorship — if not forever, then for a very long time.