GERMANY’S centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) can move fast and brutally against a leader whose time is up. In 1999 Angela Merkel knifed Wolfgang Schäuble in a steely newspaper op-ed implicitly linking him to the corruption scandal that had consumed Helmut Kohl, his political mentor. Support for the then-leader dissolved and within weeks she had taken his place.
Ghosts of the past haunt the party. Now it is Mrs Merkel, twelve-and-a-half years into her chancellorship, who is wobbling. The Christian Social Union (CSU), the CDU’s more conservative sister party, faces an election in its home state of Bavaria in October at which it fears the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany will deny it its traditional majority. To dissociate themselves from the chancellor’s decision to keep Germany’s borders open during the refugee crisis, the Bavarians are pushing her to the brink. Whether she goes over it depends on the CDU.
The dispute concerns an immigration plan presented to Mrs...Continue reading
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