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Germany’s ruling Christian Democratic Union (CDU) is having a very good pandemic. Chancellor Angela Merkel’s brand of steady, rational leadership has reassured voters and lifted her party to nearly 40 per cent in polls .
But that bounce of nearly seven points on the 2017 federal election contrasts with growing uncertainty in the leaderless party – with just over a year to Germany’s next federal election.
It’s nearly two years since Merkel stood down as CDU leader and, in September 2021, the 66-year-old will hand back the chancellery keys. But to whom?
For six months the CDU has limped along with a lame-duck leader, defence minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, who will stand down in December after two luckless years in office.
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Three – possibly even four – men are jostling for the CDU top job. Yet coronavirus is demonstrating a unique property in German: exposing their political shortcomings more than their suitability.
Complicating matters is last week’s surprise nomination of Olaf Scholz, the federal finance minister, as chancellor hopeful for their junior coalition partner the Social Democratic Party (SPD).
After the pandemic forced the CDU to cancel April’s special leadership party, a similar fate may yet befall the annual gathering in December.
Undeterred, Merkel continued her summer tour through Germany on Tuesday, taking her for the second time – completely coincidentally – to a region ruled by a CDU leadership hopeful.
In North Rhine-Westphalia, Merkel insisted she “wouldn’t get involved” in the CDU leadership race. Then she did just that by praising the western state’s premier, Armin Laschet, standing beside her at a socially distanced press conference, as having “many of the qualities” required as CDU leader.
“If you govern Germany’s biggest federal state in a coalition that’s working efficiently without too many squabbles,” she said, “then that is [political] munition that carries weight.”
Meat plants
That was a shot in the arm of her host, whose political credibility has taken a hit after a series of Covid-19 cases in his state’s meat industry plants.
Yet Laschet, a centrist CDU continuity candidate, is still smarting from Merkel’s warm words during a recent photo opportunity with Bavarian state premier Markus Söder. The leader of the ruling Christian Social Union (CSU) hopes he can convince the CDU, its big political sister, to field him as chancellor candidate.
Like Laschet, Söder’s leadership ambitions could be tripped up by his pandemic profile-seeking. After a steady run as a crisis manager, Söder’s credibility took a knock in recent days after it emerged that 900 holidaymakers were not contacted for two weeks despite testing positive for Covid-19. Further such revelations could haunt Söder, who insisted in July that anyone who fails in managing such a crisis has “no moral claim to leadership”.
A similar fate could yet befall another – as yet unofficial – leadership hopeful: federal health minister Jens Spahn. Like the other two, the ambitious 40-year-old has also worked hard to present himself in the pandemic as focused and heavyweight. But he may be about to make himself very unpopular for saying on Tuesday that he “can’t imagine” how German regions can go ahead with their hugely popular gatherings in the pre-Lenten “Karneval” season.
Away from the media spotlight on Tuesday, Merkel’s former arch-rival, Friedrich Merz, relaunched his leadership bid – his second in two years – in Saxony. His hosts introduced Merz to a local audience as the only man to “finally offer leadership . . . that doesn’t stray into left-green or social democratic camps”.
As the clock ticks down to election day, the challenge for CDU members now is not just to find a new leader – but to work out what kind of party they want their new leader to lead.