Merkel’s time is running out
Angela Merkel may be approaching a moment of hubris. The German chancellor has begun to think of herself as indispensable to her country, to Europe and, although she is careful not to lay public claim to the throne, to the leadership of the free world.
‘‘The longer I stay, the better I get,’’ she told an interviewer this week. The chancellor will come to regret that statement.
With encouraging opinion polls, she seems set to win next month’s general election. If she serves out the full fourth term, if she becomes Angela IV, the chancellor will have been 16 years at the helm.
The fact is, in her rush to fulfil some kind of historic destiny, as the leader who saved the eurozone, or who fought off European populism, she has neglected the rumbling at the roots.
There is real concern about the integration of refugees who many voters see as direct competition for stretched resources.
Every terror attack in Europe involving an asylum-seeker heightens the fear. This is not, however, a single-issue election. People are unhappy about the collusion between carmakers, their readiness to dodge diesel emission standards, their proximity to government and the pervasive suspicion of establishment cover-ups.
The economy is doing quite well, which should give fair wind to an incumbent government, but voters worry that their teenage children are being exploited in their apprenticeships and traineeships. Unpaid overtime, a demand from some employers that the youngest in the workforce turn up two hours earlier than everyone else, also rankles.
The west of Germany, its former industrial power house in the Ruhr and northern city-states like Bremen, have been neglected.
Merkel has never been in synch with the productive south, the great engineering exporters of Munich and Stuttgart. At beer-tent rallies in the Catholic south the divorced daughter of a Protestant pastor looks gawky. She may as well be in a foreign country.
It is not for the most part xenophobia that has turned the massive influx of newcomers into a toxic issue for her but rather the feeling that she is out of touch.
The pockets of poverty, some of it quite new, the ethnic tensions in towns: all this has passed her by. Opinion polls flatter her; they reflect the weakness of her challengers rather than her hidden strengths.
The polls will certainly narrow before election day in four weeks’ time, and there may be a few surprises.
If Merkel does survive, in whatever political constellation, my bet is she is unlikely to serve a full term.
Tensions in Germany are too acute, her politician’s touch no longer sure. Sooner rather than later we will be on the hunt for a new candidate to fill the unwelcome role of leader of the free world.
The Times - London