March 15, 2021 - 11:52am
Angela Merkel’s sixteen year run as Germany’s Chancellor comes to an end later this year. It was, however, assumed that her legacy would continue — with her designated successor, Armin Laschet, leading the Christian Democratic Union to a fifth successive election victory in September’s general election. But after a pair of regional elections yesterday, that’s looking uncertain.
The CDU did badly in both regions. Only a few weeks ago, the party had hopes of winning back Baden-Württemberg from the Greens and Rhineland-Palatinate from the Social Democrats. Instead they went backwards. In Baden-Württemberg, they got less than a quarter of the votes — a region where they once had the support of more than half the electorate.
This time round, the CDU’s poor performance can’t be blamed on a populist surge. Indeed, the hard Right AfD party lost even more votes than the CDU. It’s also worth pointing out that the Social Democrat vote was also down, slightly, in both regions. Instead the main beneficiaries were the Greens plus a couple of liberal parties.
If this pattern holds across the country in the months ahead, then the CDU could find itself out of power nationally — and replaced by a ‘traffic lights coalition’ made up of the Social Democrats (red), the liberal Free Democrats (yellow) and Greens (er, green). With the Greens regularly polling ahead of the Social Democrats, this would give Germany its first Green Chancellor.
And there’s another intriguing scenario — which is that the CDU will not choose the lacklustre Laschet at its candidate for Chancellor, but instead turn to the Minister-President of Bavaria, Markus Söder.
Strictly speaking, Söder is the leader of a different party — the Christian Social Union, which is somewhat more conservative than Merkel’s party. However, because the CSU is a Bavaria-only party it operates in permanent alliance with the CDU — uniting around a joint candidate for Chancellor in national elections. Usually, that candidate is from the CDU, but occasionally the tail wags the dog and a CSU politician is proposed.
Even before yesterday’s dismal results for the CDU, Söder was clearly and embarrassingly more popular than Laschet. Now the pressure on the CDU/CSU alliance to go Bavarian will ramp up. This would be the second time that Merkel has botched the succession (her first pick, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer was not a success).
Söder is very much not a Merkel Mini-me. This is the guy who ordered Christian crosses to be displayed in all public buildings in Bavaria — ostensibly as ‘cultural’ rather than religious emblems. More recently, though, he’s been cultivating a more centrist image — as if preparing to move from the Bavarian to the national stage.
If he succeeds, then it’s almost certain that the next elected Chancellor of Germany will be neither a Christian Democrat nor a Social Democrat — for the first time since, well, quite a long time ago.
Peter Franklin is Associate Editor of UnHerd. He was previously a policy advisor and speechwriter on environmental and social issues.
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SubscribeMr. Franklin, you’ve missed a very important detail. A large contributing factor to the Union’s terrible performance is likely to have been the recent mask scandal: CSU MP (Georg Nüßlein) and CDU MP Nikolas Löbel have been caught up in what I’ll call “Maskgate”. Löbel has admitted that his company received a EUR 250,000 commission for the sale of facemasks. Nüßlein is said to have also received commissions for the sale of facemasks and public prosecutors in Munich are investigating him on suspicion of corruption.
If only the public prosecutors would get busy addressing the corruption surrounding the provision of PPE etc in the UK.
Under Merkel the CDU stands for nothing – not the German nation (of which she is ashamed – as if centuries of German history can be summed up by the 12 years 1933 to 1945), not economic liberalism (economic policy has been a gradual move to the position of the SPD – minimum wage law, inheritance tax, more government control of medicine,….), not even nuclear power – as Chancellor Merkel has agreed to abolish it (which makes the promise of reducing C02 emissions to “net zero” impossible).
As for the Greens – the German Greens are not as extreme as the British ones, but their policies are a mass of contradictions (such as no nuclear power – and net zero C02 emissions), but they are a “new broom” they have not been in power before, at least not at the national level. The Germans may well vote for them in September – and then, soon, bitterly regret it.
After the refugee crisis and covid, it’s a wonder that her legacy was even expected to continue. An argument for term limits surely, 16 years is way too long.
Merkel’s sell-by-date was 2016. Since then she’s just been limping on because there was no real alternative. There still aren’t any brilliant alternatives, it’s just that she’s definitely not running in the upcoming elections. For Germany and the EU, it’s going to be like being left at nursery on your own by mummy for the first time.
Well, mummy has made a bunch of really bad decisions so it’s probably a good thing that the kids are getting dropped off.
I missed these election, so thank you to Peter for bringing us some good news, for once. In particular, it’s good to hear that Laschet might not succeed Merkel. I have not read or heard anything good about him.
In the end this is not surprising -the vaccine rollout debacle is also catching up with her. Germany’s handling of C-19 looked good for a while, not so much now even if still much better than the UK’s . Overall Angela Merkel is well overrated. She is a a clever politician – hence her longevity – but she typified being in the right place at the right time and making the most of her opportunity. Within 10 years I think she will have little legacy – see https://www.jpost.com/International/Middle-Israel-Germanys-tragic-heroine-561776 for a good and interesting overview of her political career to add to the comments .