Henry Donovan

Germany's conservatives voted for decisiveness after the dreary Scholz years. Instead, they got another moderator-in-chief – one very much like Angela Merkel. On the campaign trail the promise was simple. Friedrich Merz would be everything Angela Merkel was not: decisive where she dithered, confrontational where she compromised, ideological where she triangulated. Conservative voters, exhausted by 16 years of Merkel's anaesthetic centrism and then three more of Olaf Scholz's leaden continuation of it, were ready to believe him. Germany had endured nearly two decades of chancellors who moderated rather than led, who treated conviction as a liability and caution as a virtue.

A 16-year-old schoolgirl was allegedly raped in the garden of a state-funded youth centre in Berlin-Neukölln last November. It was evening. The building was locked. She spent hours crouching in a corner of the grounds before climbing a fence to escape, breaking her ankle in the fall. Her alleged attacker, a 17-year-old, is said to have filmed the assault. In the weeks that followed, he allegedly used the footage to blackmail her into returning every Monday. Other young men from his group are said to have found out about the video and began pursuing her too. That alone would be horrifying enough. But what happened next is worse That alone would be horrifying enough. But what happened next is worse – because what happened next was nothing.

When the Alternative for Germany (AfD) condemned America’s strikes against the Iranian regime last week, the reaction in Washington must have been one of genuine confusion. For months, perhaps years, the party had presented itself as the natural German ally of the Trump movement. AfD politicians travelled to Washington; Alice Weidel was warmly received and endorsed by J.D. Vance at last year's Munich Security Conference. In Maga world, the AfD was increasingly spoken of as Germany’s conservative insurgency – a mirror image of how Trump sees his so-called revolt against liberal elites. Then came the first real test. Tino Chrupalla, the AfD’s co-chairman, declared last week that Donald Trump had 'started as a president of peace' but risked becoming a 'president of war'.

What a radically changing year 2025 has been: a year in which Germany’s new chancellor, Friedrich Merz, found himself fighting not merely the parliamentary opposition, the Russian threat and the brittle promise of European unity, but also his weakest and most self-confident adversary of all – his own coalition partner, the Social Democrats (SPD). After years of aborted ascents, Friedrich Merz has finally reached the summit. For more than seven months now, he has sat in the Kanzleramt in Berlin he once seemed destined never to occupy. His ascent, however, was ungainly. Two rounds of voting were required to crown him chancellor.

Every 11 November, the United Kingdom stands still. Bugles sound, heads bow, and for two minutes the nation remembers – not just the fallen, but the idea that peace was bought at an impossible price. Yet remembrance, if it is to mean anything, must also be a warning. Europe is again unstable, deterrence is fragile, and Britain’s armed forces are once more the smallest they have been in generations. The difference is that, this time, it is not Germany that alarms us by arming – it is Germany that is doing what Britain will not. In Berlin, the ghosts of British tanks and troopers still linger. Drive a couple of hundred miles west of the city and you can still see the outlines of training grounds once churned up by the tracks of the British Army of the Rhine.

As Germany braces for economic hardship and the mounting danger of confrontation with Russia, its leaders appear preoccupied with the wrong battle. The coalition government, the social democratic SPD party, and even Chancellor Friedrich Merz seem more intent on finding ways to muzzle the AfD party than on facing the realities before them. Yet none of them has the slightest notion of how to succeed. Their so-called strategy has descended into farce – a self-inflicted culture war that barely exists. It is clear: the handling of the AfD by Germany’s centre political parties and the media is a disaster of historic proportions. Precisely because it is not an accident, not collateral damage – but a self-inflicted fiasco.

Friedrich Merz arrived in Washington this week alongside Europe's most senior leaders, ostensibly to coordinate the continent's response to Trump's Ukraine designs. Here was Germany's moment to demonstrate the leadership it perpetually claims to seek – a chance to shape the conversation that will determine Europe's security architecture for years to come. Instead, before the Chancellor could even present his case to the Americans, his own foreign minister Johann Wadephul delivered a masterclass in diplomatic self-sabotage from Berlin. Germany must play 'an important role' in any future peacekeeping mission in Ukraine, declared the CDU politician, before categorically ruling out German soldiers on Ukrainian soil.

Friedrich Merz has managed something truly remarkable: he's simultaneously the most internationally successful German chancellor in decades and quite possibly the most domestically incompetent. While foreign leaders sing his praises and credit him with everything from Ukraine's weapons supply to Nato's renewed backbone, German conservatives are discovering they've elected a man who can charm Trump but can't outwit a Social Democratic Party that barely scraped 16 per cent of the vote. The damage extends far beyond one failed nomination The man who promised to clean up the catastrophic legacies of both his predecessors, Scholz and Merkel, has indeed delivered on the international front.

Two days. That’s how long Friedrich Merz’s signature border policy survived before walking into a perfectly laid ambush. While international economists celebrate Germany’s potential economic resurgence under new leadership, the country’s Chancellor is discovering that electoral victories mean little when faced with opponents who don’t need votes to wield power. The weapon of choice? Legal challenges so precisely timed and coordinated they make Swiss clockwork look amateur.

Despite suffering their worst electoral humiliation since the 1890s, Germany's Social Democrat party (SPD) is displaying a remarkable combination of arrogance and delusion. Having collapsed to a mere 16 per cent in last month's election, the party has nonetheless strong-armed Friedrich Merz's victorious CDU into abandoning fiscal discipline and embracing ruinous debt policies. This audacious blackmail would be impressive if it weren't so dangerous for Germany's economic future.

German politics has delivered yet another masterclass in how to betray your voters while maintaining a straight face. This time it is Friedrich Merz, the supposedly steel-spined conservative who spent years critiquing Angela Merkel's drift leftward, who has now managed to outdo even his predecessor's talent for abandonment of what he promised. Merz's capitulation on Germany's constitutional debt brake – a cornerstone of his campaign – took precisely fourteen days. Not even Britain's most notorious policy flip-floppers could match such efficiency.

The real winners of Germany's election are sitting in Moscow. Despite Friedrich Merz's Christian Democrats (CDU) technically claiming victory with a meagre 28 per cent showing, the truly remarkable surge belongs to the openly pro-Russian forces that now dominate the political landscape. The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) and the far-left party Die Linke (successor to East Germany's communist SED) have emerged from this record 85 per cent turnout election with unprecedented strength: both unapologetically aligned with Vladimir Putin's interests and fundamentally opposed to Germany's Western orientation.