it will be a great filip _ to the labour party and to social democrats and people to the left of the conservatives _ to have seen a wave of social. democrats taking over in europe whereas only a short time ago people were gloomily predicting _ that the populace would be in power. we have norway, sweden, finland, lspain, portugal and a large chunkl of the italian government. and now the social democrats coming top in germany a sense, _ a wave of things happening. very often those things will role over the channel towards us. i a lot of people feel encouraged. it's often been said that merkel was a steady hand and quite patient, waiting for the dust to settle before making a wrong decision. she made some important, hugely important unilateral decision and time in office.