After a torrid 100 days, Germany's Friedrich Merz is mocked as a ‘dead man walking'. He must fight back

The Guardian

2 days ago

The passing of the 100-day milestone for any world leader usually denotes the end of their honeymoon period. Friedrich Merz has not been able to enjoy even a single day of grace, beginning with the very moment he was supposed to be elected Germany's chancellor but wasn't. On 6 May, as Angela Merkel watched from the visitors' balcony, the Bundestag voted and declined to approve its new leader. For a few hours, chaos ensued, until the second round of voting saw his chancellorship approved, so the swearing in could proceed.
It was a symbolic act of defiance, and because it was a secret ballot, it wasn't clear how many of the 18 dissenters came from Merz's Christian Democrats (CDU) or from their new coalition partners, the Social Democrats (SPD). But it cast a shadow over the new administration from its inception: this is the government that nobody wanted – not least its protagonists.
This is the verdict of most of the media and political class, the so-called Berlin bubble. Barely a day passes when Merz isn't mocked as a dead man walking. He is trying to create a form of mainstream conservatism that is at once modernising – dealing with Germany's lamentable embrace of digitisation, tackling bureaucracy, rebuilding infrastructure – and more culturally conservative. He is simultaneously accused of conceding too much to the left and of being in bed with the far right. He is denounced for being both vindictively punitive and emptily performative to migrants. This relentless drumbeat of negativity is the German equivalent of the dirge of 'broken Britain'.
Merz's difficulties do not arise from a single source. They partly emanate from the way he is portrayed: the starched conservative, thin-skinned and wealthy (an attribute regarded as suspect in Germany). Some of this is unfair, some of it is not. He has handled himself with far more restraint and aplomb than originally predicted. Not that he has received much credit for it.
The second problem is structural. To avoid political hegemony, every government must be a coalition. It must share power between parties but also between the federal centre in Berlin and the 16 regions. During the first 75 years of the federal republic, compromise was regarded as virtuous. Now it is seen as a mark of weakness.
Which brings us to the present day. Trumpism has come to town, and Germany's political culture is being infected by the same populist impulses as everywhere else. New media outlets are blurring the lines between fact and fiction, destroying careers, and leading mainstream politicians to behave in new ways. Parliament has become more unruly, and in a country that has long been synonymous with deliberative politics, MPs and ministers take instantly to social media with instant judgments on breaking news.
The first battle of the new hyperpolarised era was played out less than a month ago, just as parliament was going into recess. The issue was the proposed nomination to the constitutional court of Frauke Brosius-Gersdorf, a judge who holds more liberal views on abortion than is permitted under Germany's restrictive legislation. She was demonised by the press and the political right, leading some spooked CDU MPs to disappear on holiday early, to deprive her of the necessary majority. Senior government officials pulled the vote at the last minute, rather than face an embarrassing defeat. Her decision to withdraw her candidacy last week led to much fury in the SPD and soul-searching in Merz's team. Even some more traditionalist MPs appeared to rue the fact that they had been swayed by pressure from the far right, and that the coalition had been undermined.
This confected scandal forms part of a wider strategy by the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) to split, weaken and eventually destroy the CDU, thereby becoming the largest party by the next election in 2029. Its members are open about their desire to make it impossible for Merz's coalition to govern. To get anything through, Merz must agree it with the SPD. This leaves him vulnerable to the rightwing drumbeat that he is kowtowing to the 'woke left'. This unnerves those on the right of the CDU, some of whom are urging Merz to abandon the so-called firewall that prohibits cooperation with the AfD. Any such break with this rule would give the German far right a potential route back to power for the first time since the end of the second world war.
Meanwhile, the AfD's share of the vote, according to Germany's generally reliable pollsters, heads inexorably upwards. The party of the far right is on about 24%, three points above its already-impressive and alarming election result in March, and only two points below that of the CDU.
The prospect of the AfD becoming Germany's largest party is a dark scenario, but it is not inevitable. Two factors may yet work for the government. The first is the AfD's tendency for infighting and overall incompetence. The other is the personal durability of the chief protagonists, Merz and his SPD deputy chancellor and finance minister, Lars Klingbeil.
Two terms the coalition uses in much of its communications are: die politische Mitte (the centre ground) and handlungsfähig (capable of getting on with it). They don't set the pulse racing, but that is deliberate. Merz's approach is not dissimilar to that of Keir Starmer in the face of the threat of Reform UK: soldier on and demonstrate to voters that the day-to-day grind still matters and hope that it produces rewards.
Merz's ministers point to a long list of planned action and legislation, which includes huge investment in critical infrastructure and security (the defence ministry now has a department called 'expansion'), tightening migration and speeding up procurement. A scrap with their SPD partners is likely over plans to cut welfare, particularly the minimum income guarantee, but some form of compromise is expected in the autumn. Both parties will fight hard over the detail, if only to reassure their bases that they are sticking to their principles.
It will be messy, sometimes dramatic, but the coalition may yet work. Merz and Klingbeil get on reasonably well – in contrast to the personal feuds that were a hallmark of Olaf Scholz's administration. They know their parties may be in the doldrums, but they also know they will suffer even more if this government fails to deliver. There is nothing like jeopardy to concentrate the mind, not just for 100 days, but for the next four years.
John Kampfner is the author of In Search of Berlin and Why the Germans Do It Better