These are the contenders to replace Angela Merkel in Germany. It’s a stark choice that could shape post-Brexit Europe
- Tough choices await Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union after her decision to quit the party leadership
- Contenders include ‘mini-Merkel’ Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, pro-US Friedrich Merz, and nationalist poster boy Jens Spahn
Over the past three years, the question looming over Germany has been whether Angela Merkel had finally received a knockout blow.
And for three years, the answer was the same: she’s down, but not out.
Now, however, she’s down and out. Her party’s top brass have forced her to announce that she won’t be running for the leadership of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) at their conference in December. At the time of writing, she wants to remain chancellor until 2021. But by this time next year, she’ll likely be out of that job, too.
Sunday’s elections in the state of Hesse were the final straw. The CDU lost 11.7 percentage points of the votes in a contest dominated by national issues. Some 50 per cent of voters polled said they wanted to send a “protest message” to Berlin. The message has been received. Merkel’s party is scrambling to abandon her.
It’s late in the day. In the general election in September 2017 Merkel’s CDU and its Bavarian sister the CSU (referred to collectively as “the Union”) lost 8.6 per cent compared with 2013. The Union’s losses were equivalent to the gains of the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD).
