Olaf Scholz - know-it-all or genius?

Olaf Scholz. Photo: Flickr

A year ago tomorrow Olaf Scholz was sworn in as Germany Chancellor. Calling the first twelve months of his premiership a baptism of fire would be something of an understatement.

From the Omicron wave, to the Russian invasion, to the resultant energy crisis and record inflation - just about everything that could have gone wrong has gone wrong. And then some.

So, 12 months in. How has he done?

Is he destined to go down in the history books with Kurt Georg Kiesinger as one of the few Chancellors no one has ever heard of? Is he an accident of history who only made it into the job due the weakness of the opposition? A one-term sitting duck for the get go?

Or is he actually a great thinker and a master tactician who has so far steered the country through an unprecedented storm of crises while at the helm of one of the most fragile coalitions in modern memory?

Let’s face it. Most people are in the first camp. If you put any stock in polling, a year into this legislature …