The man poised to become the world’s youngest national leader has a fateful decision to make before he even names his cabinet. Sebastian Kurz, the 31-year-old leader of Austria’s People’s Party, is expected to be asked to form a government on Thursday having emerged as the winner of Sunday’s parliamentary elections. This will present him with a choice between the far-right Freedom Party (FPO) and the centre-left Social Democrats as his principal coalition partner. The latter would be the bland, familiar, less popular choice. It would also be the right one.

Mr Kurz owes his swift rise to a large helping of youthful dynamism and an even larger one of hardline opposition to immigration and political Islam. As the youngest minister in Austria’s previous coalition