CONSERVATIVE MERKEL RIVAL LAUNCHES COMEBACK BID
Former BlackRock figure Merz leads favourites for party leader post.
A1920s-themed Berlin ballroom packed with several hundred supporters was the unlikely stage for Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative nemesis to unveil his comeback bid. “I’m ready to do this,” Friedrich Merz told the audience when someone asked whether he was going to enter the race for the leadership of Ms Merkel’s party and run to succeed her as chancellor in Germany’s next election.
The supervisory board chairman of BlackRock Inc’s German unit, who is leaving the post to focus on politics, sprinkled his speech late on Thursday with criticism of Ms Merkel’s climate policy and her response to European proposals by France, suggesting she’s too cautious. He also expressed “a lot of respect” for the four-term chancellor, who has said she won’t run again in 2021.
Still, there’s no mistaking it: Mr Merz is back and that’s bad news for Ms Merkel. Her plan to serve out her term until 2021 may run into trouble if her longtime critic finally wins the party chairmanship. Mr Merz, 64, comes from the conservative wing of the Christian Democratic Union and has been a harsh critic of Ms Merkel’s more centrist approach ever since she fired him as her caucus leader in 2002.
His first comeback attempt failed in 2018 when he narrowly lost the contest for the CDU leadership against Ms Merkel’s protege Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer. Now, the chance for revenge is coming into sight again.
Ms Merkel’s team is alarmed about the prospect of Mr Merz becoming party leader, sources say. They are hoping that North Rhine-Westphalia state premier Armin Laschet will strike a deal with Health Minister Jens Spahn to avoid an open power struggle.
What worries Ms Merkel is that Mr Merz could force an unpredictable three-way contest by seizing the initiative early and pressing his claim with members, the source said.
He has an early edge. Seven out of 10 CDU supporters see him as a good chancellor candidate, and across the political spectrum he’s ahead of his rivals with 40% approval, compared with Mr Laschet’s 30% and Mr Spahn’s 24%, according to an Infratest dimap poll conducted for public broadcaster ARD.
Parliamentary President Wolfgang Schaeuble said the CDU should stick to the process laid out by Ms Kramp-Karrenbauer.
“She will now talk with all those within the CDU who have shown interest,” and then discuss the situation with the Bavarian sister party, he said on Friday. The former finance minister, who supported Mr Merz in the party leadership race in 2018, didn’t want to publicly voice his support for Mr Merz when asked by the interviewer.
After returning to his BlackRock post after his defeat by Ms Kramp-Karrenbauer in December 2018, Mr Merz has continued to snipe at Ms Merkel’s leadership.
Her “passivity and lack of leadership” are hanging over Germany like a “fog”, Mr Merz said in October after the party suffered historic losses in elections for the eastern state of Thuringia. “I just cannot imagine that this way of governing in Germany will go on for another two years,” he said.
It’s also difficult to imagine Ms Merkel remaining chancellor for long if Mr Merz takes control of her party machinery.
A succession that looked stitched up for Merkel loyalist Ms Kramp-Karrenbauer was blown wide open this week when the fallout from that defeat in Thuringia prompted Ms Kramp-Karrenbauer to resign. As local parties manoeuvred to piece together a majority in the fragmented state legislature, the CDU ended up voting alongside the far-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD, for the first time ever.
The incident triggered nationwide outrage and when the local party leader brushed off Ms Kramp-Karrenbauer’s attempts to bring him into line, Ms Merkel was forced to step in and restore order.
From Ms Merkel’s perspective, the best candidate would be Mr Laschet, a moderate who would most likely continue her liberal policies on refugees and workers’ rights. But Mr Laschet, who stayed out of the last race, has not signalled whether he will run. If he did, he would risk his position as premier of Germany’s most populous state.
Mr Merz, in contrast, has nothing to lose. Already wealthy from his career, he has announced he’ll step down from BlackRock at the end of March. As CDU leader, he would push for a much more market-oriented economic policy and restrictions on immigration. During his first campaign about 15 months ago, Mr Merz pledged to regain voters lost to the AfD by focusing on Germany’s national identity. Under Ms Kramp-Karrenbauer, the opposite happened. The AfD made inroads in a series of state elections in eastern Germany while the CDU descended into infighting over how to respond to the threat.
In a sign that he’s already taking on the challenge, Mr Merz will speak at a traditional CDU event in Thuringia on Feb 26 marking Ash Wednesday, putting himself at the epicentre of the crisis that opened the door for his return.