From serial loser to Germany's next chancellor?

Friedrich Merz seems to have beaten off challenges from inside the CDU to be their next chancellor candidate.

Dear Reader

It was December 2018. Outside the convention centre in downtown Hamburg it was a damp and mild day. Inside, Friedrich Merz was hot under the collar.

The man who had been in self-imposed exile from politics for a decade was delivering a speech to the CDU party conference that was supposed to seal his shock return at the head of the centre-right…