There is nothing quite like being told your country is in decline by a 19-year-old who has just eaten half his body weight in tacos.
My stepson came back from the World Cup in Mexico with a vague enthusiasm for mezcal, and the news – courtesy of his Mexican friends and their parents – that Germany is on a downward path. Late trains. Bureaucratic overload. Well-informed people, it seems.
Meanwhile in Berlin, just before the summer recess, the sound of deckchairs being rearranged for eight senior political posts had a touch of the Titanic about it.
Okay, that’s over-dramatic. But what could have been an opportunity for Friedrich Merz to show leadership, HR skills and, well, a plan, turned into a masterclass in creating a PR nightmare.
It’s not entirely his fault – the supposed misogynist even put two women in top jobs – but he still gets all the blame.
It’s striking to watch the chancellor’s authority crumble within his own party. It used to be the Social Democrats who carelessly, or not so carelessly, damaged their Bundeskanzler beyond the point of no repair.
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The Christian Democrats, by contrast, were nicknamed Kanzlerwahlverein – “chancellor-election club” – for standing loyally by their man or woman, or at least not daring to speak out against them for fear of getting into trouble.
Now, the party is simmering with a frustration that’s no longer confined to CDU WhatsApp groups. MPs facing difficult re-election campaigns are counting down the weeks until September. And although public rebellion will not improve anyone’s chances, silence no longer comes naturally.
As TNW readers know, Merz had to ditch the head of the parliamentary group, Jens Spahn, for being a first-class surrogacy hypocrite. Spahn quietly sidestepped German law and his party’s conference resolution by hiring a surrogate mum in the US.
I’ll spare you (most of) the details of the ensuing reshuffle because even Germans would have struggled to name their transport minister before late July. Patrick Schnieder remained largely invisible during his year in office, and the trains still run late. But he is very well liked inside the CDU – and his brother Gordon happens to govern Rhineland-Palatinate.
Sacking the man turned out to be a bit of a family honour affair, complete with local CDU officials cancelling a planned Merz visit. Professional politics at work.
Things became farcical when the would-be replacement texted the chancellor at around 4am to withdraw – having twice assured him otherwise. By then Schnieder had already informed his staff he was out, leaving Merz – who had wanted to announce a dynamic reshuffle – with a vacancy, no Plan B and facing accusations of governing “like a feudal kingdom”.
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Those reproaching Merz for high-handedness are hardly innocent of it themselves. Bremen’s CDU chief (whose name was unfamiliar to me before) lectured Merz: “You’re not running a company here, you’re running a party”.
This is deeply ironic, given Merz was once welcomed back as the politician-turned-businessman who’d bring management skills to politics.
Now that rebellion is fashionable, several CDU figures are even demanding the social security reforms be watered down.
And it didn’t help that the new health minister, Carsten Linnemann, is on record as saying just over a year ago: “I wouldn’t have been successful. If they’d put me forward – say, as health minister.” Duh.
It is unclear whether the dust will settle during the holidays. The fact remains, however, as the centre right newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine hasrepeatedly pointed out during the last two weeks: the CDU doesn’t have a substitute chancellor on the bench.
