On 23 March, Germany will officially mark a year since a general election ushered out the lacklustre coalition of Chancellor Olaf Scholz. Nobody has mourned its loss, and few will heap praise on his successor.
But even though Friedrich Merz has made mistakes – he hasn’t got through many of his promised early reforms – the new German leader deserves more plaudits than he is receiving. Particularly if you compare his tenure with that of Sir Keir Starmer in the UK.
Merz is busy shaking his compatriots out of their collective stupor while delivering some hard truths.
Germany, he tells them, must rebuild its armed forces, and fast. It must understand that ‘peace’ is guaranteed only when countries are strong – a notion that due to German history is a hard sell.
He also says Germany must stop obsessing about budget surpluses and borrow big, must modernise its economy and shake off its triple dependencies on Russia (for energy), China (for exports) and the US (for security). In short, it’s time to toughen up and see the world for what it is rather than what many would like it to be.
All of that in a year.
Merz is also thinking the previously unthinkable, at least in Germany. He has ordered a revamp of its foreign security apparatus, in the knowledge that it is no longer safe to work with Donald Trump, whose threats about Greenland have only raised that tension.
Merz discusses out loud the prospects of the US no longer coming to Europe’s defence.
In recent days, Merz disclosed he had held initial talks with France’s President Emmanuel Macron over the possibility of joining its nuclear umbrella, underlining his call for Europe to develop a stronger self-standing security strategy.
Friedrich Merz with Emmanuel Macron and Keir Starmer at the Munich Security Conference this month (Photo: Kay Nietfeld-Pool/Getty Images)And yet, he is someone whose career in politics and business has until recently been more staunchly aligned to the US than most other Germans.
Starmer seems to think many of the same things, but doesn’t dare to say them out loud.
And yet, the German political system requires governments to be composed of different parties – a post-war constitutional settlement that until recently was considered a virtue, offering consensus and compromise, and is now seen by many as a vice, being slower and more deliberative. This should really hamper Merz.
In comparison, Starmer has a majority of over 150 MPs, and yet his government has stumbled and stuttered because of a failure of leadership. His inheritance, bad as it was, was no worse than that facing his equivalents across Europe, in Canada, Australia, Japan and other like-minded nations.
On the international stage, Merz is growing into the role of the continent’s pre-eminent politician. “Freedom can no longer be taken for granted,” he told the Munich Security Conference last week, in an opening speech that mixed polite disdain for Trump’s Maga worldview with warnings for his countryfolk to toughen up.
Friedrich Merz has shown disdain for Donald Trump’s worldview (Photo: Evan Vucci – Pool/Getty Images)The culture wars, he declared, are not a European construction. “We don’t believe in protectionism and tariffs; we see the climate crisis for what it is.” And when talking with Trump or about him, Merz does not display the obsequiousness that has been characteristic of others.
By 2029, Germany will – if current trends continue – have met the Nato target of 3.5 per cent direct spending on defence, as a proportion of GDP, and another 1.5 per cent on critical infrastructure. More than one trillion euros is being found, most of it from borrowing. Britain, by contrast, is holding out until the very last moment, 2035, to achieve the goal, and most of the extra cash will be backloaded.
After Munich, Starmer suggested accelerating the process, only to be told by the Treasury that the money isn’t there.
However, none of this is giving Merz’s poll ratings much of a lift. The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) continues to have an overall lead, with 27 per cent of the vote, against only 24 per cent for Merz’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU). Merz’s own popularity also remains in the doldrums, with only 23 per cent satisfied with him. Only around half of CDU supporters expressed approval of their own leader.
Germany has been a strong support of Ukraine throughout the war, and has increased its own military spending in the face of threats from Russia (Photo: Omer Messinger/Getty Images)Merz’s consolation might be to consider the fate of others. Even though he faces daily hurdles in his reform agenda, Merz is not facing a leadership challenge. There may be mutterings from within his own party, but nothing more than that. This is a far cry from Starmer’s increasingly precarious position.
But one date in the diary fills Merz – and the leaders of the other mainstream parties – with trepidation. On 6 September, voters in the eastern state of Saxony Anhalt go to the polls.
The AfD is currently streets ahead of the rest, at around 39 per cent, with the CDU trailing on 26, and the rest far behind. Will this usher in a worrying new world of German politics.
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There are signs that the extremist vote might be softening, in part due local sleaze stories and voter antipathy towards Trump. Could Merz weaponise this against the AfD? The idea would previously have been unconscionable.
In many ways politics in Europe is hurtling into the unknown. No government can predict what harm Trump will unleash next. But the leaders who stand up to him, and who display candour to their citizens, might be the ones most likely to survive.
John Kampfner’s new book, Braver New World, is published in April
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