German chancellor Friedrich Merz promised to lead Germany out of the political drift of recent years. But after just 100 days in office, he has already lost his way. His approval ratings have collapsed to around 30 per cent – lower than any previous chancellor at this stage in their tenure. Worse still, he has acquired a reputation as a flip-flopping turncoat with no control over his own government.
Merz is certainly failing to meet his key objective – to stop the rise of the right-populist Alternative for Germany (AfD), by proving that the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) is still the natural home for conservative voters. Last week, Bild published a ‘shock poll’ putting support for the AfD at 26 per cent – ahead of Merz’s CDU, which is languishing at 24 per cent.
Support for Merz’s governing coalition as a whole is also tanking. Like the Social Democratic Party-led (SPD) coalition of the previous chancellor, Olaf Scholz, Merz’s coalition, with the SPD now a junior partner, commands the support of just 37 per cent of the electorate.
Merz’s loyalists blame ‘circumstances’. They claim the coalition with the SPD was always going to make governing difficult. While the CDU wants to freeze welfare spending and significantly reduce immigration, the SPD wants to raise welfare spending and implement a less restrictive and more ‘humanitarian’ immigration policy. Across the board, from business regulations to trade-union legislation, the two parties have conflicting objectives. As Jens Spahn, the leader of the CDU’s parliamentary group, recently put it, this coalition is no ‘love match’.
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