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Hello, I'm Sam Holmes and welcome to Spectator Out Loud. Every week, a few of our favourite writers read their pieces from the latest issue.

This week we'll hear from Wolfgang Munchau on the political situation in Germany,

Andrew Watts on his year-long battle against a parking ticket, and Hannah Tooms on her love of

Baileys. First up, Wolfgang Munchau.

Sixteen years after Angela Merkel became Chancellor, Germany will have a new leader next week,

Olaf Schultz. We might expect Schultz to enact a few domestic reforms, but do little to change

the country's foreign policy, as is the tradition of a new German government.

But this time the consensus behind the country's foreign policy has broken down.

Relations with Russia are at a delicate phase and things might be about to change rather a lot.

Schultz is from the center-left Social Democratic Party,

and both of his coalition partners, the Green and

the Liberal FTP, are pushing for reform.

They disagree with him over the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline to Russia, which they think is symbolic

of Germany's subservient relationship to Moscow.

They abhor Angela Merkel's cozy relations with President

Xi Jinping, nor are they too keen on the bad boy governments of Poland and Hungary,

whom Merkel tried to protect from EU sanctions over their failure to adhere to European law.

Germany's new coalition says it will not support countries that break the law.

Look at the three-party manifestos, and you will not find much overlap between these positions

on foreign, economic and social policy. What defines their joint political project is the desire to modernize.

Germany's industrial production is trapped in the analog era.

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