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 party, just as his old nemesis, Angela Merkel’s power faded.

That autumn, the veteran chancellor had been forced to surrender the party leadership after suffering two poor election results.

Days after she announced she was giving up the post she had held for 18 years, Merz made the dramatic announcement that he would run to take her place.

Largely a forgotten figure, Merz had once been touted as a future chancellor. But he lost a power struggle with Merkel in the early noughties when, with the CDU in the opposition, Merkel was first elected party chairwoman and then took over the second most powerful function in the party - faction leade…