Angela Merkel has left a big gap with no obvious successor
POLITICS watchers in Berlin describe this as a “Goetterinnendaemmerung”, the twilight of the goddesses: after a second painful state election result for the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party this month, Chancellor Angela Merkel decided against running for the CDU leadership again in December. While that’s not the same as giving up her government post quite yet, it’s the official signal that the Merkel era is ending.
Any successor is going to be sailing in stormy waters. The outcome of last Sunday’s election in Hesse, the German state that includes the country’s financial capital Frankfurt, signalled that the political dispersion which has led to lengthy government formation talks and shaky cabinets in many European countries is the new norm in Germany, too.
In Hesse, Merkel’s CDU achieved its worst result in 50 years (27pc of the vote) and its federal coalition partner, the Social Democratic Party (SPD), its worst result ever (19.8pc). This probably won’t lead to any momentous changes in the state itself.
For five years, Hesse was ruled by a coalition of the CDU and the Greens, with Merkel ally Volker Bouffier as minister-president and Greens’ state leader Tarek Al-Wazir as his deputy and economics minister.
This combination is the most likely one post-election, too; together, the CDU and the Greens, who surged to a record 19.8pc result, hold 69 seats in the state parliament, the thinnest possible absolute majority.
Other coalitions are only theoretically possible, and Bouffier and Al-Wazir are the most popular state politicians. And yet it’s clear that the federal ruling coalition is unpopular, and Merkel couldn’t avoid political responsibility for the dismal performance recently of her party and its ally, Bavaria’s Christian Social Union.
Governing one compromise at a time, hanging on because each election result is a drubbing but not a catastrophe has clearly lost its appeal for Merkel. Whether or not she blames herself for the CDU’s and the coalition’s troubles, she’s about to remove her personality as a factor.
In 13 years of governing Germany (and 18 as CDU leader) there is, of course, a lot that Merkel has done wrong. She over-promised and under-delivered on environmental goals. She kept hoarding the government’s tax windfall long past the point where the budget was balanced rather than step up investment in infrastructure, especially digital infrastructure.
In 2015 and 2016, she let in more than 1.2 million asylum seekers pretty much without any planning, overtaxing the German bureaucratic machine and police force and letting the nationalist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party ride the immigration issue into all the state parliaments, as well as the federal one.
Finally, since last year’s inconclusive election, she has focused too much on forming a workable coalition and then keeping it together amid constant squabbles, so Germans got the impression that no one was interested in governing.
A majority, according to a recent poll, hold Merkel personally responsible for the government’s sorry state.
The growing demands for change, however, are not going to be satisfied with mere personnel moves, even such momentous ones as Merkel’s gradual easing out of power (she has said she believes in keeping party leadership and chancellorship in the same pair of hands). No successor, be it Merkel’s hand-picked CDU secretary general, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, conservative Health Minister Jens Spahn, harsh Merkel critic and former CDU faction head Friedrich Merz or any of the CDU’s successful state minister presidents, will have an easy time winning a broader popular mandate than Merkel when the traditional parties of the centre-right and centre-left are in institutional decline. The public know what they can offer and find it irritatingly boring.
The Social Democrats have some popular leaders – Foreign Minister Heiko Maas has the highest approval rating of all German politicians, and Finance Minister Olaf Scholz is in the top three – but if either of them led the party into an early election, he’d probably fail miserably.
The party itself looks out of ideas. The CDU has a similar problem, no matter who wins the internal struggle.
A shift to the right, toward the anti-immigrant stance of the AfD, would do little for the party’s standing; in Bavaria, the CSU failed with that tactic, and both in Bavaria and in Hessen, the pro-immigrant Greens have done better than the nationalists.
A shift to the left is something Merkel tried – and earned much resentment in the party ranks, speeding up the defection of some conservatives to the AfD.
What voters are looking for is new ideas, clear views, a focus on their day-to-day problems rather than inter and intra-party strife.
The Greens gain with their friendly, non-confrontational approachability point to one potential winning strategy, though it’s easier to be friendly and non-confrontational when not in the hot seat.
On the other hand, the AfD’s unapologetic nativism is another way to win votes. The growing polarisation and dispersion aren’t good for big parties in general, even with highly capable, talented leaders.
That’s why the current crisis is hardly likely to lead to the emergence of largerthan-life, Merkel-like figures able to unite the country. The big-tent parties’ monopoly on power can hardly be saved; Germany’s immediate future appears to be somewhat like many other European countries – a shifting electoral landscape, unstable governments, attempts at trial and error that lead to deadlock.
The public know what traditional parties can offer and they find it irritatingly boring