Austria heads for snap election as coalition shatters

Vienna

AUSTRIA'S youthful foreign minister took over as leader of the country's main conservative party on Sunday and called for a snap parliamentary election that centre-left Chancellor Christian Kern admitted he could not prevent.

Mr Kern's Social Democrats (SPO) and Sebastian Kurz's conservative People's Party (OVP) are coalition partners and have dominated Austrian politics for decades, but are now at daggers drawn.

An early election would give the far-right Freedom Party (FPO), currently leading in opinion polls, a good chance of entering natio…