Merz is taking on Trump but that won’t stop the AfD

Germany’s new leader may have staved off the ascension of the far-right party for now, but he faces a critical test that will have consequences for all of Europe,

- John Kampfner

One picture tells a thousand words. During one of the many TV election debates with a studio audience, Friedrich Merz was confronted by a woman telling him that all Germans wanted was peace, and that peace could only be secured by being nice to that lovely Mr Putin, and that if Germans weren’t nice to that lovely Mr Putin he’d nuke them. I paraphrase, but only slightly.

The Christian Democrat leader – the man now charged with forming a government at a time of immense European insecurity – tried calmly to reason with her. He also wanted his own family to sleep soundly at night, he told her, but for that to happen, Germany needed to help Ukraine more and to increase spending on its own military. The woman kept on shaking her head. Merz was getting more cross, but he stopped mid-stride. As the results in Sunday’s election show, female voters are wary of his tendency to belligerence.

As the dust settled on an extraordinary campaign – one that started with an economic dispute, morphed into a migration and terrorism debate, and ended up with Donald Trump – Merz acknowledged within minutes of his victory the scale of the problems he faces.

“I would never have thought that I would have to say something like this in a TV show but, after Donald Trump’s remarks last week ... it is clear that [his] government does not care much about the fate of Europe,” he said during the obligatory discussion round involving all the party leaders, as he reflected on the anguish and fury that many Germans felt at the verbal onslaught unleashed the weekend before – in Munich, all of places – against Ukraine, democracy and Europe.

He then said, even more startingly: “My absolute priority will be to strengthen Europe as quickly as possible so that, step by step, we can really achieve independence from the USA.”