Greens get the early edge in race to succeed Angela Merkel as German chancellor

Germany’s Greens are in position to make history, surging past Angela Merkel’s conservative bloc in the race to replace the four-term chancellor in September’s election.

The party that’s vowing to increase spending and tighten controls on the banking industry finished a distant sixth in the last national vote in 2017.

But this week the Greens hold a 7pc lead in a poll published just hours after Christian Democratic Union leader Armin Laschet secured the conservative nomination in a bruising battle.

On Monday the Greens named Annalena Baerbock their chancellor candidate, in a perfectly choreographed event meant to display unity and show that the party is ready to take on the serious business of running Europe’s largest economy.

The poll on Tuesday showed the Greens jumping five points to 28pc, while Merkel’s bloc slumped seven points to 21pc, their worst result since at least 1998. The euro slipped to the day’s low on the news.

While it’s just one poll in the immediate aftermath of a nasty power struggle that damaged the conservatives and their lead candidate, it shows that many Germans are ready to trust the Greens with the chancellorship – and sets up a tough campaign for control in Berlin.

With the traditional anchor of German politics damaged by the power struggle and voters already frustrated by missteps made during the coronavirus pandemic, Baerbock – a 40-year-old political scientist with no previous government experience – is poised to become one of the most powerful leaders in the world.

She’s the top choice for Germans.

While the country doesn’t directly elect the chancellor, people vote for a specific party knowing who will be in charge if the party wins.

And in the new poll, Baerbock was the candidate of choice for 32pc of respondents, with Laschet and Social Democrat challenger Olaf Scholz each at 15pc.

With Scholz’s SPD a distant third in the polls, the main battle for the chancellery is between Baerbock and Laschet, the 60-year-old CDU chief.

Seen as a moderate in Merkel’s mold, Laschet is already politically wounded.

The bruising nomination contest exposed just how many people in his own bloc doubt his ability and laid bare the divisions among conservatives that Merkel’s authority had papered over.

With little time and margin for error, he’s already set his sights on an attacking campaign.

“Everybody knows what’s at stake,” Laschet said this week, as he gave an early glimpse of his likely campaign strategy, warning that a coalition led by the Greens would be “a different republic”.

To cast doubt on Baerbock’s credentials, Laschet played up his experience running Germany’s most-populous state of North Rhine-Westphalia – while implying that his Green rival lacks the same know-how, because she’s never run a German state or federal ministry.

But many Germans are frustrated by the government’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

And on Monday Baerbock positioned herself as the candidate of change, attacking the “mudslinging” among the conservatives.

A Green-led Germany would be very different from how the country looked under Merkel for the last 16 years.

It would spend more aggressively to accelerate a transition to a cleaner economy and it would borrow and tax the wealthy to achieve its goals.

Here’s a look at the Greens’ key policy proposals

• Spending spree The party’s 10-year investment program is equivalent to an annual boost of about 1.5pc to the Germany economy, based on current levels.

The program calls for spending in a wide array of initiatives including high-speed Internet, research in quantum computers and biotechnology and climate-neutral infrastructure.

• Looser debt brake One of the most controversial policies could be plans to reform Germany’s constitutional debt limits. The proposal calls for investment to be treated as public assets, allowing the state to take on more debt and take advantage of low interest rates.

• Boring banking The Greens plan to target the finance industry, and return to what they call “boring banking”.

That means strict regulation on capital-market speculation and obligatory leverage ratios. Investment banking would be split from the deposit business.

All parts of the finance industry would be regulated, and watchdogs would get more teeth to prevent a repeat of the Wirecard AG scandal.

• ECB reform On the European level, the party says that the ECB should pursue high employment and social welfare alongside controlling inflation – a difficult change to push through.

The burden on the ECB would be eased by a common fiscal policy in the euro-area.

Meanwhile, banking union should be completed through a European Union guarantee for savings – and the European Stability Mechanism should be developed into a European IMF, which would grant member state credit lines.

Bloomberg