Merkel heads towards comeback after support for rival fades
THE man who would dethrone Angela Merkel came to town yesterday, but only a small crowd turned up to hear him speak. Martin Schulz, the former European Parliament president and staunch Brexit critic, made an impassioned appeal ahead of bellwether regional elections tomorrow.
“We owe it to democracy to vote,” he said. “We have to defend what we have struggled so hard for.”
But the signs are that his campaign to replace Mrs Merkel is fading before it even began. If the polls are to be believed, the woman they used to call the “Queen of Europe” is on course for her most stunning comeback yet.
North Rhine-westphalia, which goes to the ballot box in the last regional vote before September’s national election, is no ordinary German state. With 18million people, it is home to almost a quarter of the country’s population.
In Germany they call the vote the “mini-general election”, and North Rhine-westphalia (NRW), is a stronghold for his Social Democrat Party (SPD), which has governed the region for all but five of the past 50 years.
But Germany’s economic success under Mrs Merkel has passed much of the state by, and former mining towns such as Duisburg have some of Germany’s worst unemployment.
It was in NRW that the most visible negative effects of Mrs Mekel’s “opendoor” refugee policy took place – the Cologne New Year sex attacks.
Yet the final polls have been an upset for Mr Schulz. Two have put Mrs Merkel’s Christian Democrat Union (CDU) ahead of his party, with 32 per cent to the SPD’S 31.
The “Schulz mania” that briefly took hold after he took over the SPD seems to have evaporated. If he cannot hold NRW, conventional wisdom goes, he has no chance in September.
In Cologne, Rudi Haner, a 51-yearold engineer, said: “Everyone here is for Merkel. Schulz is nothing to me. He has no personality. In a world of Putins and Erdogans, Merkel is different.”
The chancellor’s refugee policy is not a problem for Mr Haner. “I think it’s good what she did. The New Year attacks were exaggerated.”
Wolfgang Gaertner, a volunteer for the CDU, said: “People are more worried about the global situation, with Trump and Putin. They see Merkel as an anchor of stability in difficult times.”
Many predicted Mrs Merkel’s downfall in Germany’s last elections, in 2013, only for her to come close to winning an absolute majority — a rarity under the proportional system.
The signs are that she has sensed the wind is in her favour. A year ago, her party kept her away from regional elections as a potential vote loser. This week she has broken off business in Berlin to dash to NRW four times.
It appears she has already seen off the challenge from the far-right Alternative for Germany party (AFD), her main threat last year.
Mr Schulz did not betray any doubts about his popularity. But a regional election that should have been a coronation for him has become a vote he must win just to stay in the contest.