Portrait

With a centrist style, the social democratic victor in Germany’s election, Olaf Scholz, has been described as “continuity Merkel.” But as long as he can capitalise on his record-breaking swing from Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats, the nation is set for newly radical leadership

ANDREW ADONIS ILLUSTRATION BY TIM MCDONAGH

Two years ago, the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) was attracting not votes but obituaries. Germany’s traditional centre-left party—and the grandfather of labour and social democratic parties across Europe—had sunk to fourth place in the polls, behind the far-right AfD on just 11 per cent, with no apparent respite in view. Its junior status in Angela Merkel’s fourth coalition looked like the final death knell. I remembered the advice that Merkel gave to David Cameron, when he was faced with the necessity of a coalition in 2010: “You hug your smaller party close, then squeeze them dry.” She did this to the SPD not once, but three times during her 16-year reign.

So riven and demoralised was the SPD as it embarked on its last forced embrace with Merkel three years ago (strong far-right and far-left contingents in parliament effectively made a grand coalition the only way through) that it wouldn’t even elect Scholz, its senior minister in that coalition—and Germany’s vice-chancellor and finance minister—to be one of the party’s co-leaders. Instead, it opted for two hard-left rivals.

Olaf Scholz was the leader rebuffed. But he is now frontrunner to become Germany’s next chancellor, having led the SPD to a remarkable—if narrow—victory after a long and highly personalised election campaign, in which the party had started in third place, running not only behind the Christian Democrats (CDU) but also the Greens.

The winning margin may be slim, but if he can seize the moment, Scholz will draw considerable prestige and momentum from a result that nonetheless amounts to an astonishing achievement. Even putting aside the SPD’s dire last decade, this is an exceptional election outcome in the broader context of the nation’s postwar story. In the sevendecade history of the Federal Republic, the SPD has topped the ballot on only three previous occasions; the CDU, in its alliance with the more conservative Christian Social Union (CSU) in Bavaria, has done so 16 times. In today’s fractured political scene, neither main party is as big as it used to be, but the swing between them since Merkel’s last win in 2017 is a very substantial 7 percentage points. That is the biggest twoparty shift ever witnessed in a single election under a Federal Republic that is known for its political stability.

True, everything still turns on the left-leaning Greens and the right-leaning Free Democrats (FDP), both of whose seats will somehow have to be cobbled together with one of the major blocs to form a majority government.