Germany:Germany's grand coalition has received an unwelcome gift for its second birthday, the midpoint in its prickly four-year partnership.
As the government hits the downward slope to a general election in 2009, polls suggest an increasingly likely outcome is yet another grand coalition. Alarmed by the prospect, the Christian Democrats (CDU) and Social Democrats (SPD) are straining to discard their fudged reform agenda in favour of traditional attacks on each others' social, economic and foreign policies.
The first shot across the bow came when chancellor Angela Merkel vetoed SPD plans to introduce a limited minimum wage. SPD labour minister Franz Müntefering - the man with the plan - decided to leave the cabinet to care for his sick wife.
The SPD's subsequent cabinet reshuffle has made foreign minister Frank Walter Steinmeier Dr Merkel's opposite number.
Mr Steinmeier has attacked what he describes as Dr Merkel's media-driven approach to Russian and Chinese relations, particularly on political freedom and human rights. Since Dr Merkel received the Dalai Lama in Berlin last September, Beijing has put Berlin in diplomatic deep-freeze, suspending business contracts and cancelling meetings.
"I don't give the chancellor instructions about who to talk to but, conversely, no one in the CDU should make me responsible for the consequences," says Mr Steinmeier in this morning's Der Spiegelmagazine.
Former chancellor Gerhard Schröder has attacked his successor for her "emotional" approach to foreign policy.
"Sometimes I'm accused of being too cool, then too emotional, it doesn't really bother me," said Dr Merkel at the weekend. She has suggested her east German childhood has given her a different perspective on human rights in what she perceives as repressive regimes.
Thanks to her new centre-ground political line, Dr Merkel's CDU is stable at 40 per cent but her preferred coalition partner, the liberal Free Democrats (FPD) has fallen under the 10 per cent needed for a comfortable majority.
The SPD, meanwhile, is wallowing at just 24 per cent support despite a populist push to the left by leader Kurt Beck. His favoured coalition partner, the Greens, are experiencing an ideological meltdown since the departure of de-facto leader Joschka Fischer.
So while two thirds of Germans are unhappy with the stalemate of the grand coalition, the same polls show that a snap election could produce another. Fear of that is what holds this CDU/SPD government together.