Dear Reader,
The largest political party in Germany, the Christian Democrats (CDU), picked a new leader yesterday. Given that the CDU are head and shoulders above the competition in polling, we should now have a good idea of who Germany’s next Chancellor will be. But it's not that simple…
Regards,
Jörg & Axel
Keine Experimente!
Armin Laschet. Wikipedia Commons.
The Christian Democrats have a new leader: step forward Armin Laschet. On Saturday he won a vote at a digital party conference, beating rival Friedrich Merz in a second round run off by 521 votes to 466.
If you want to know why the victory will have been particularly sweet for Merkel, read the backstory in our Friday edition.
Who is Laschet?
Born in 1961, Laschet grew up in a Roman Catholic family in the town of Aachen near the Dutch/Belgian border. He’s spent time in the Bundestag, the European parliament and the North Rhine-Westphalian (NRW) parliament.
In 2017 he won a surprise victory against the SPD to become state premier in NRW. S…
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