Two years have passed since Franz Müntefering, then chairman of Germany’s Social Democratic party, compared Anglo-Saxon investors to “locusts”. Asked how he feels about the metaphor, the man who is now his country’s vice-chancellor grabs a metal grasshopper from a shelf and borrows from singer Edith Piaf.

“I have no regret whatsoever,” he says, speaking from his office in the labour ministry. “It is a nice image, locusts that move into a field, eat it to the ground, and move on to the next without looking back. I think it was quite apt.”