When last did a nation collapse under the unbearable weight of its prosperity? For a visitor in Berlin, Germany’s coalition talks straddled the line between complacency and smugness. Elsewhere, European politicians are struggling to balance the books by cutting education spending and capping pensions. Angela Merkel and her prospective coalition partners spent a fruitless month arguing about how to share out the rich spoils of economic success.

If you believe the headlines, the failure of the chancellor’s Christian Democrats and their Bavarian sister party, the CSU, to strike a deal with the economically liberal Free Democrats and the leftish Greens has plunged the nation into crisis. No one has told the well-heeled Christmas shoppers crowding Berlin’s stores. Wages are high, unemployment is low and the government is awash with cash. Crisis, Germans are asking, what crisis?

The country has turned inward as well as rightward. The politics of plenty might have persuaded an earlier generation of postwar politicians to raise their sights to the future of Europe. Not this one. Now what you catch is a visible irritation with the troubles of Germany’s less fortunate partners in the eurozone. If they want to succeed, they should jolly well behave more like, well, Germany.