The losses for the Social Democrats were expected to be severe and turn out to be even worse, downright catastrophic. Schroeder’s power is strongly diminished, he won’t be able to do anything without the say-so of the opposition parties, as I expected. In my opinion this is great news. The trade unions’ ability to block reforms via their hold over the Social Democrats will be much reduced and at the very least this should shut Schroeder up, even if he won’t support the war on Iraq. With any luck he might get sick of being heckled at home and irrelevant abroad and step down voluntarily. More on that tomorrow, I’m off to celebrate.