Chancellor | Merz is at the end

Chancellor Friedrich Merz is facing the first calls for his resignation from within his own ranks. Photo: Christoph Soeder/dpa The time has come: for the first time, voices from the CDU and the party environment are calling for Friedrich Merz to resign. What we are seeing is the beginning of the end of a political career characterized by destructiveness, incompetence and overconfidence. A triumvirate, consisting of the vice state chairman of the CDU Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania Tino Schomann, the ex-CDU federal executive board member and well-known publicist Michel Friedman and the CDU-affiliated billionaire and major donor to the conservatives, Carsten Maschmeyer, rings the bell for the Chancellor's funeral song.

All three declare that Merz is not suitable for the position of chancellor. Maschmeyer in particular distributes well. Merz is a know-it-all and, Maschmeyer hears, “arrogant from everyone who has to do with him.” Maschmeyer probably hoped for more from his money.

It has been said for a long time that Merz is ailing, weakened or has lost authority, but the current attack will bring down the Chancellor in the medium term, because the current critics will be followed by other, more prominent critics at the latest after the foreseeable poor election results in the state elections in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Berlin.

Because he was only able to bring the people of the country together in one thing: their disgust for him. In the most recent Forsa survey commissioned by RTL and NTV, 81 percent of those surveyed said they did not consider Friedrich Merz to be trustworthy. Cheers! This is an achievement that turns the right, the left and the non-political in the country against themselves. Not to mention his own party.

Because of his stupidity in terms of power politics, he can no longer protect himself from the consequences of his communicative inability. From the start, Merz was unable to create discipline within his own ranks and bring critics into line. But what could be even more dangerous for him is the fact that he has gradually turned allies against him. The Chancellor has therefore increasingly lost power.

He antagonized the right wing when he hastily promised the SPD that it would elect its judge candidate, Frauke Brosius-Gersdorf. He offended the Junge Union, his former base, when he agreed to maintain the pension level until 2031. He lost the CDU Rhineland-Palatinate because of his dealings with ex-transport minister Patrick Schnieder, whom he sawed off in an ice-cold and amateurish manner, and the Eastern CDU is against him because he wants to abolish the pension from the age of 63 but wants to keep the firewall.

The SPD, cynically his most loyal partner in Berlin, is also fed up. An influential Social Democrat is said to have reported to “Spiegel”: “If the Union agreed on a different chancellor, we would elect him.” So, buckle up and get out the popcorn, because things are likely to be turbulent in the government in the next few weeks. There will also be some daggers flashing in the coming storm.

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