Angela Merkel never quite managed to appoint a successor. Her 16 years at the helm of Europe’s largest democracy has seen every potential challenger either annihilated or neutered. For all her motherly charms, Mutti Merkel is a merciless political operator.
The Christian Democratic Union and its Bavarian sister, the Christian Social Union, seem to have settled on a political incompetent to lead them into September’s federal elections. Armin Laschet is, at least for now, set to become the bland, monotone heir to Merkelism — the result of a stitch-up that may yet unravel. Pandemic-stricken Germans are growing tired of the CDU: roughly a quarter of its voters have melted away since the start of the year.
Meanwhile, the country’s Green party is surging. According to one poll, it is comfortably ahead of the CDU. If that prediction proves correct, the party that has never before fielded a candidate for the chancellery could see its newly crowned nominee leading the next German government. ‘We both wanted it,’ said a smiling Robert Habeck as he ushered his victorious rival on to the stage on Monday. ‘But in the end there could only be one.’ While the CDU has indulged in months of petty backroom spats, the Greens’ co-leaders were able to come to a good-natured agreement over the candidacy.
Habeck had at times seemed the favourite, a naturally warm children’s author who some German papers have taken to calling ‘Germany’s Tony Blair’. After a weekend of negotiations with his joint party leader, Annalena Baerbock, the pair decided that the 40-year-old mother of two had a better chance of winning over the German people.
The ‘Queen of the Greens’ is the descendant of the movement’s long evolution over the past 40 years.
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