Olaf Scholz’s coalition prepares to take office in Germany

THREE-AND-A-HALF years ago German politics looked exhausted. Angela Merkel had just assembled her third “grand coalition”, a tired centrist alliance that left no one satisfied. Today, two months after an election that saw Mrs Merkel’s Christian Democrats booted from office, the mood is markedly brighter. On November 24th the leaders of Germany’s Social Democrats (SPD), Greens and Free Democrats (FDP), a pro-business party, exuded optimism as they gathered in a converted Berlin warehouse to hail their new “traffic-light” coalition (named after the parties’ red, green and yellow colours). In 177 pages and 52,000 words—a shade more than “The Great Gatsby”—their three-party deal lays out a policy agenda for the next four years.