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3 Jan, 11 tweets, 2 min read
OK, so it's a fortnight away - the "Digital Party Conference" of the CDU to decide who the next party leader will be

And whoever wins this is going to have a good chance of being Chancellor, succeeding Merkel after the election in September this year
There are three main candidates in the running - all middle aged men from Nordrhein Westfalen
- Friedrich Merz
- Armin Laschet
- Norbert Röttgen
So who's going to win?

For ages it looked like Laschet was the clear front runner. Prime Minister of Nordrhein Westfalen (NRW), and with a kind of folksy-beergarten manner, it looked good for him.
But then came COVID, and in the first wave it looked like NRW was pushing to open up too early, and questions started to be raised as to whether he would be up to the job...

Laschet's star is falling
The candidate profiting is Merz. The comeback kid at 65 years of age would take the CDU more to the right - which seems to be what a slew of the 1001 delegates (esp those from the states of eastern Germany) want. That despite the pragmatic line of Merkel being +popular than ever.
The problem is that while the party faithful might like him, does anyone else? The CDU might find it hard to find coalition partners were it to go for Merz, and the SPD would be rubbing its hands with glee were he to win.
Röttgen is both more pragmatic and more centrist than Merz, and a much more compelling character than Laschet. But hasn't got a chance. Such is party politics...
A couple of news stories in German trying to make sense of the discussion currently - this today from Bild
bild.de/politik/inland…

And this trying to assess delegate intentions
theeuropean.de/the-european-r…
How this pans out is going to have a major impact on both Germany and Europe... A victory for Merz is both a scary prospect, but also opens up the opportunity for a German government without the CDU in it for the first time since 2005
I'll have a close eye on this over the next fortnight - and beyond!

/ends
There's a further thread about this topic here:

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More from @jonworth

Jon Worth Profile picture
5 Jan
To those saying that those who have got their public health advice wrong earlier in the pandemic should put up their hands and apologise... a little cautionary lesson from another sector

A short 🧵

1/
Public health is not my thing

But Brexit is

And throughout 2019 and 2020 I have been trying to make predictions as to what will happen in that story. Lives do not depend on this, only my professional reputation (marginally) does

2/12
The three series of #BrexitDiagram I made in 2019 were extraordinarily accurate

Series 1/2
jonworth.eu/brexit-where-n…

Series 3
jonworth.eu/brexit-what-ne…

Series 4
jonworth.eu/brexitdiagram-…

Each series got that stage of Brexit right

3/12
Read 12 tweets
Jon Worth Profile picture
3 Jan
I wrote a 🧵 earlier about the state of the race to become the leader of the CDU (and probably become Merkel's successor as Chancellor of Germany)



This follow up thread explores one aspect more deeply: the interplay between candidates and polls

1/13
So what's the starting position?

CDU is 3% ⬆️ in the opinion polls now, compared to their result in 2017. But that 36% is a good bit below the 41.5% they secured in 2013.

In other words: 36% is good, but not stellar.

2/13 Image
Recall that the 33% from 2017 caused Merkel to be replaced by AKK as CDU party leader, so disappointed was the party with that result.

30% would result in some very serious questions being asked about the party's strategy.

3/13
Read 13 tweets
Jon Worth Profile picture
2 Jan
This is a deeply unpleasant reaction to @petergumbel’s very personal piece.

“Wink wink nudge nudge” - what is that, Matt? It might have escaped you that the piece says “My grandparents, who fled Nazi Germany for Britain”.

Would you *dare* say that about a minority?
Or - putting it another way - how dare those of us who’ve (thank goodness) never had parts of our family slaughtered by a dictatorial regime ever presume to judge how future generations of those families react at the personal level?
Also the piece says this: “Xenophobia and racism, presumed to be banished to the margins of public life, made an ugly return to the mainstream”

Which it has.
Read 5 tweets
Jon Worth Profile picture
31 Dec 20
UK academic takes the absolutist position of a provocative French journalist, and uses this as a mirror for his own absolutist position that the EU has not reflected about the impact of Brexit

The same academic is then criticised for this position - because that there has been *no* reflection in the EU is not the case - but then twists the words of those responses

For the record here is the search - not a single person replied to Menon saying the EU was perfect

twitter.com/search?q=perfe…
Read 7 tweets
Jon Worth Profile picture
30 Dec 20
In my politically formative years - in my teens - I always struggled with references to politicians of previous generations.

“Edward Heath would have done that!” or “Harold Wilson would have done that better!” people might have said, but it didn’t resonate
Now of course I’ve subsequently read about Wilson and Heath and plenty of others besides. I have an impression of how those political times must have been
But then this week my immediate reaction - when hearing the Commons would have a matter of just a few hours to scrutinise the trade deal - was to wonder how Robin Cook would have behaved
Read 10 tweets
Jon Worth Profile picture
26 Dec 20
I saw these Johnson pics circulating on Twitter, and assumed this must be a kind of hatchet job against the PM somehow... but no, they're ALL on the official Flickr channel - Creative Commons Licensed no less!

flickr.com/photos/number1…
Mackerel, damn it!
I got it wrong, didn't I
Read 7 tweets

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