German election: Knives out for Merkel heir Armin Laschet after ‘catastrophe’

Armin Laschet is publicly blamed after his Christian Democratic Union party suffered worst general election defeat in its history.

Armin Laschet is being blamed for the disastrous election results of the Christian Democrat Union. Picture: Getty Images.

The embattled leader of the conservative Christian Democratic Union is facing recriminations from his own party after it suffered the worst general election defeat in its history, leaving its centre-left rival perfectly positioned to form the next German government.

Armin Laschet has been publicly blamed by CDU MPs for the “catastrophic” result. He was forced to withdraw his claim to have a clear mandate for the chancellorship after an uproarious session of the party’s ruling body. One MP said Laschet, 60, could be ejected if he failed to assemble the parliamentary majority he needs to succeed Angela Merkel as chancellor.

The centre-right party and its Bavarian ally, the Christian Social Union (CSU), which have held power for the past 16 years, are in disarray after sinking to a combined 24.1 per cent of the vote, down from 32.9 per cent at the last election four years ago. Olaf Scholz led the Social Democrats (SPD) to take 25.7 per cent of the vote, and is more likely to take over from Merkel.

Olaf Scholz, chancellor candidate of the German Social Democrats (SPD), speaks to the media. Picture: Getty Images.

German voters prefer Scholz to Laschet by a margin of more than four to one, according to a survey by the broadcasters RTL and NTV.

Shortly after the polls closed Laschet, chief minister of North Rhine-Westphalia, the most populous state, said the outcome had given him a strong claim to lead Germany. Yet the scale of the CDU-CSU’s losses, which included Merkel’s former seat on the Baltic coast and Laschet’s home constituency, prompted open rebellion, with isolated voices urging him to quit now.

At a meeting of the CDU national executive yesterday (Monday) several senior figures criticised Laschet to his face. Karl-Josef Laumann, 64, the labour minister in Laschet’s state cabinet, was said to have told the room: “The operation was bad. The candidate, too, if he loses. Quite simply, that’s always been the way of things.”

Others rebuked Laschet on live television. Michael Kretschmer, 46, chief minister of Saxony, where the party collapsed to third place behind the SPD and the right-wing populist Alternative for Germany, said Laschet had overstepped the mark with his talk of a mandate to govern. “There was a very clear mood of change against the CDU,” Kretschmer told MDR Sachsen, a local broadcaster. “If we keep on going like this, then I’m very worried about what’s in store for us in four years’ time.”

Markus Soder, 54, the CSU leader and chief minister of Bavaria, said Laschet was in a position only to make an offer to potential coalition partners rather than claiming the leadership of Germany by right. Soder lost to Laschet in April in a battle for the right to run for the chancellorship. His ally, Alexander Dobrindt, 51, leader of the CSU MPs in the Bundestag, told colleagues at a meeting in Munich that the sister parties had suffered an “unnecessary” defeat because they chose the “wrong course, the wrong campaign and the wrong candidate”.

If Laschet is to become chancellor he must now win over two coalition partners: the Green party and the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP).

However, he will face stiff competition for their support from Scholz, 63, his SPD rival. The two smaller parties said yesterday (Monday) they were beginning exploratory talks with each other and would seek a common front for negotiations with the SPD or the CDU-CSU.

Yesterday Laschet sought to strike a more conciliatory tone, acknowledging that he had played a part in the “painful losses” and promising to approach the talks with “humility”. He added: “No party can claim a mandate to govern, neither us nor the SPD.”

Yet this did not appease his critics. Hans-Jurgen Irmer, 69, an MP on the CDU’s conservative wing from a rural constituency near Frankfurt, laid the blame for the defeat squarely at Laschet’s door and said he could be toppled if he did not secure the chancellorship. “The frustration and the anger in the CDU base are pretty big,” Irmer said. “There are 50 MPs who lost their seats, not because they did a bad job, not because they didn’t show up, but because they were in the downward spiral and couldn’t do anything.”

Irmer said Laschet had been so unpopular that in some areas CDU activists had refused to put up posters depicting his face. “He never made an impression,” Irmer said. “If you want to win an election, you need some members who are really ardent about the candidate in the best sense of the word, who go out on the streets with enthusiasm and feel that they’re making a stand for something. And the enthusiasm for Laschet as a candidate was – I’ll formulate this very elegantly – restrained.”

The WerteUnion, a group of about 4,000 CDU members with strong right-wing leanings, called on both Laschet and Soder to stand down without delay.

Ellen Demuth, 39, a centrist CDU state MP from the southwestern Rhineland-Palatinate region who was a prominent opponent of Laschet during his campaign for the CDU leadership, also urged him to resign. “Armin Laschet, you lost,” she wrote on Twitter. “Please understand this. Prevent further damage to the CDU and stand down.”

Scholz twisted the knife further, telling his supporters that it was time for the CDU-CSU to relinquish their grip on power and drift into opposition.

However, Laschet’s position is not yet untenable and he retains a degree of support in the party, at least until the end of the coalition talks.

Patrick Sensburg, 50, a former CDU MP who lost his seat in the Bundestag, said the party leader was doing “a very good job” and that the defeat had been more because of “internal quarrels” between the CDU and CSU. “Of course, it doesn’t make things any easier when there are regular attacks from within your own ranks,” he said.

The Times