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Welcome to The Spectator Podcast. I'm Isabel Harbman. On this week's episode, we'll be looking at the situation in Germany and whether Angela Merkel can hold things together.

We'll also be speaking to Norway's immigration minister and discussing the dying art of cottaging, and if you don't know what that is, stick with us to the end of the podcast.

After 12 years as Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel is this week facing the worst crisis of her premiership.

Coalition talks collapsed after the free Democrats walked away from negotiations with Merkel's

Christian Democrats. So where does this leave Germany? In the magazine this week, William Cook

calls the situation uniquely damaging, while James Forsyth outlines the implications for Brexit.

James joins me now, along with Thomas Keelinger,

London correspondent for Die Welt. And because this podcast was recorded on Budget Day,

you may be able to hear the helicopter hovering over Westminster. So James, does this spell

the end of Angela Merkel's 12 years as Germany's Chancellor? I think the election results

suggested that she was coming to the end of her career. I think

the British parallel I would draw is with Tony Blair's victory in 2005. He won the general

election, but it was clear after that, but it was never going to be glad, confident morning again,

and that he was on the kind of glide path out of office. I think that's the kind of position that Angela

Merkel is in now. Thomas, can you explain for the uninitiated into German party politics how Merkel has ended

up in her sort of swan song, basically?

Well, she's hoist on the peatard of German political culture, which always goes for coalition

building, and with ever more parties in Parliament, and with ever more of an uncertain trumpet, as it were,

that the electorate sort of blow coming up with these indecisive sort of election results,

she's having to make ever more compromises.

And while she's been good at doing that and steering the country clear of all internal disputes,

...