Three-way battle to take charge of Merkel's legacy

Unprecedented struggle for soul of Germany's most powerful party

THE lines are being drawn in a battle for the soul of Germany’s most powerful political party as it prepares to choose a successor to Angela Merkel.

Less than a week after Mrs Merkel announced she was stepping down as leader of the Christian Democrats (CDU), it is already clear the race to succeed her will be a struggle for the identity of the party that has ruled Germany for the past 13 years.

There are three serious contenders. On one side are Friedrich Merz, a prominent businessman and old rival of Mrs Merkel’s, and Jens Spahn, the openly gay health minister. Both want to take the party back to what they say are its conservative roots.

On the other is Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, the party chairman popularly known as “mini-Merkel”, who is the standard-bearer for the centrists who want to preserve the Merkel legacy.

Whoever wins will have to work alongside Mrs Merkel, who wants to stay on as chancellor until the end of her current term in 2021.

The CDU has never had a leadership race this competitive. Usually its leaders are agreed by the party elite behind closed doors and then waved through in a ceremonial vote. Twice before there have been two candidates.

But this year there could be as many as six, although only three have a chance of winning, and the party is dusting off its rule book on run-off votes. The new leader will be chosen by delegates to the party conference in December, and the candidates are expected to appear at hustings over the next month.

Mr Merz, 62, has been the big surprise of the race so far. A former rival of Mrs Merkel who quit politics in 2009 after losing a power struggle with her, he declared his candidacy within minutes of her announcing she was stepping down.

The early front-runner, he is at pains to stress that he does not want to take the party to the Right. “The CDU must offer all voters of the political centre a reliable home,” he said.

But it is the party’s Right wing that has rushed to en- dorse Mr Merz: he is seen as a leader who could win back the votes Mrs Merkel lost to the nationalist Alternative for Germany party (AfD).

Famed in Germany for his quick wit, he is a far more effective media performer than Mrs Merkel. He is a millionaire who spent his years in the political wilderness working in the private sector, notably as a director of BlackRock, the world’s largest investment fund.

But his business links could turn off centre-Left parties such as the Social Democrats and the Greens when it comes to forging coalitions – a vital skill for any German political leader.

Mr Merz’s candidacy has been a deeply unwelcome development for Mr Spahn, who has spent the last few years carefully building himself as the champion of the CDU Right, only to see the role snatched from him.

He has tried to project himself as the youth candidate, releasing a slick campaign video this week. But it attracted derision for its abrupt cuts and extreme close-ups, which jarred with his wonkish persona.

To make matters worse, his mentor, the former finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble, is said to be backing Mr Merz, and leaning on his former protégé to pull out of the race to avoid splitting the Right-wing vote. But Mr Spahn is reportedly refusing to cooperate, and wants to fight on.

Ms Kramp-Karrenbauer has been silent, apart from a brief Twitter message saying she would launch her leadership campaign next week.

Her tactics appear to be straight out of the Merkel playbook: the chancellor is famous for letting her rivals destroy each other while waiting quietly in the wings.

Ms Kramp-Karrenbauer is no stranger to this: she once compared her electoral tactics to competitive cycling: “Stay in the pack until the final stretch and then move into the overtaking lane”.

Many believe the leadership is hers to lose. She was elected party chairman with 99 per cent support earlier this year and remains highly popular. She has no rival for a considerable centrist vote.

Her biggest problem is shrugging off the role of the continuity candidate: at a time when the party is looking for a fresh start, the “mini-Merkel” label may prove a hindrance.

If one were to believe the British establishment, Angela Merkel, who has said that her fourth term as German Chancellor will be her last, has been a great success, holding Europe together through turbulent years. The reality is very different. She has overstayed her time in office and is the most overrated major politician of recent times. Leaders such as Konrad Adenauer or Helmut Kohl made mistakes, but they had inspiration and charisma and were responsible for substantial achievements. Mrs Merkel is the supreme civil servant, and the legacy she will leave is depressingly typical of cynical technocrats.

Her most famous and controversial policy, opening Germany to refugees in 2015, was a rare display of courage – and even that had disastrous consequences. It radicalised German politics. After the Second World War, Germany imposed upon itself a straitjacket of centrism, while broadly committing itself to capitalism and the North Atlantic alliance. The integration of East Germany after 1989 was a challenge but, with some vision, Mrs Merkel could have moved the country forward when she became Chancellor in 2005.

Instead, she vacillated from Left to Right on economics and welfare, sometimes making the previous social democrat government look conservative, shattering her party’s reputation for good governance. She was far too cosy with Russia and was unduly harsh on Greece during the Eurozone crisis, without offering a reform plan for the EU’s institutions that might have promised a fairer, more decentralised future. If anyone could have persuaded her fellow EU members to give David Cameron something substantial in his renegotiation process it was her, and his failure probably helped Brexit win the referendum.

For that, many Leavers are forever grateful.

In the latest polls, the far-Right AfD and the far-Left Greens and Linke enjoy combined support of an astonishing 45 per cent. Mrs Merkel’s

13 years in power have not been a testament to her ability but confirmation of the sclerotic nature of German politics: like Tony Blair and Mr Cameron, also political triangulators, she hasn’t solved the country’s biggest questions – just put them off.