Friedrich Merz is why the AfD is winning

German chancellor Friedrich Merz promised to lead Germany out of the political drift of recent years. But after just 100 days in office, he has already lost his way. His approval ratings have collapsed to around 30 per cent – lower than any previous chancellor at this stage in their tenure. Worse still, he has acquired a reputation as a flip-flopping turncoat with no control over his own government.

Merz is certainly failing to meet his key objective – to stop the rise of the right-populist Alternative for Germany (AfD), by proving that the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) is still the natural home for conservative voters. Last week, Bild published a ‘shock poll’ putting support for the AfD at 26 per cent – ahead of Merz’s CDU, which is languishing at 24 per cent.

Support for Merz’s governing coalition as a whole is also tanking. Like the Social Democratic Party-led (SPD) coalition of the previous chancellor, Olaf Scholz, Merz’s coalition, with the SPD now a junior partner, commands the support of just 37 per cent of the electorate.

Merz’s loyalists blame ‘circumstances’. They claim the coalition with the SPD was always going to make governing difficult. While the CDU wants to freeze welfare spending and significantly reduce immigration, the SPD wants to raise welfare spending and implement a less restrictive and more ‘humanitarian’ immigration policy. Across the board, from business regulations to trade-union legislation, the two parties have conflicting objectives. As Jens Spahn, the leader of the CDU’s parliamentary group, recently put it, this coalition is no ‘love match’.

But all this excuse-making ignores the elephant in the room. Merz put the CDU in this position when he refused to work with the AfD in any capacity, including merely seeking its support on a vote-by-vote basis. This was despite it being the second-biggest party in the Bundestag, after winning 21 per cent of the vote in the federal elections. Instead, Merz promised to uphold the ‘anti-AfD firewall’ and decided to form a government with the SPD, a party that had just recorded its worst-ever election result, winning only 16 per cent of the vote. And now the colossally unpopular SPD controls the key ministries of finance, defence, labour and social affairs.

Merz has compounded this disastrous decision to turn his back on the populist right with a series of political betrayals and u-turns. In the run-up to the election, he pledged to restore Germany’s ‘debt brake’, which puts a limit on how much the federal government can borrow. But just days after the election, he rammed through a massive debt-funded spending package, before the new parliament had even convened.

On energy and climate change, he has proven to be just as fickle. Having once mocked German leaders’ green dogma, he is now a champion of Net Zero and refuses to correct the disastrous decision to shut down every last nuclear power plant. Likewise, he once opposed the previous government’s Self-Determination Act, which allows gender self-identification. But now, he embraces it.

Perhaps his most shocking volte-face involves Israel. Having pledged solidarity with Israel during the election campaign, he has since announced a halt to arms sales – a move he had previously condemned Scholz for even considering. This u-turn has provoked uproar among sections of his own party.

Thanks to his long-running rivalry with Angela Merkel, Merz had long been a beacon of hope for conservatives disillusioned with her opportunism and bland centrism. Yet, his track record so far is dismal. He has u-turned and abandoned prior principles at will. Many now see him as indistinguishable from all the other establishment politicians, be they CDU or SPD.

Yes, Merz’s government has moved towards the populist right on the key issue of illegal immigration. It has upheld border controls, increased deportations and overseen a significant fall in asylum applications. This is something that voters overwhelmingly support.

Yet, at the same time, they feel that the government is still not doing enough – something they attribute to the pro-migration attitudes of the SPD and of the domestic courts, as well as judgments by the European Court of Justice that have gone against Germany (plans to designate certain countries as ‘safe’ for deportation have been scuppered by the court).

This disillusionment with both the CDU and the SPD is driving many voters, especially conservative voters, to conclude that only the AfD can deliver real change. This disillusionment is reinforced by Merz’s refusal to even consider cooperating with the AfD.

It could have been very different for Merz. Instead of tying himself to a failing SPD, which voters clearly wanted out of power, he could have led a minority government. He could have defended his positions in parliament, and sought majorities on a vote-by-vote basis with the AfD and others on issues that matter to the public.

Instead, he fell into line with the political establishment. And so, after just 100 days in office, he finds himself trapped. To one side, there’s his coalition partner, a hostile SPD, and to the other, the surging populists of the AfD. Merz would be well advised to leave the coalition and reconsider his party’s core values. If the CDU continues on its current course, it risks becoming as irrelevant as the other centre-right parties in Europe have already become.

Friedrich Merz may have thought he could defeat the populist right. So far, he has been its greatest enabler.

Sabine Beppler-Spahl is spiked’s Germany correspondent.