This really is the beginning of the end for Merkel - but it will be a slow and painful departure for the 'Queen of Europe'

Germans woke up on Wednesday to a new and uncertain political future.

Angela Merkel, the woman who has dominated Europe for more than a decade is wounded, perhaps fatally, by a rebellion from where she least expected it — within her own Christian Democrat party (CDU).

In the space of a few hours on Tuesday night, she saw her authority begin to slip away. The German press is already describing her as a “lame duck”. Wednesday’s headline in Bild, Germany’s biggest-selling newspaper, said it all: “Can Merkel still be chancellor?”

What happened?

Mrs Merkel’s MPs did not challenge her directly. German politics is not so brutal or so swift. Instead, they chose the annual election of the party’s parliamentary group leader, a vote that is usually a formality, to rebel. The role, a sort of elected Chief Whip, has no direct equivalent in UK politics. 

Although theoretically chosen by backbenchers, the position is traditionally in the gift of an incumbent chancellor, whose nominee is waved through unopposed. Indeed, this year was the first time since 1973 that a challenger had dared to stand against a chancellor’s candidate.

But on Tuesday, Volker Kauder, the right-hand man who has served Mrs Merkel loyally in the post for 13 years, was unceremoniously dumped by her MPs in favour of the challenger, Ralph Brinkhaus. It was an unprecedented challenge to Mrs Merkel’s authority, and a clear message from the party. 

“You’ve always had my back,” she told MPs ahead of Wednesday’s vote — only for them to stab her in it. One senior MP from her coalition partner described it as an “uprising against Merkel”.

Summer of crises

The rebellion did not come out of nowhere. Mrs Merkel led the party to heavy losses in last year’s election and then struggled to form a government, eventually cobbling together a coalition after the longest negotiations in postwar German history.

At the start of 2018 her authority appeared restored as she promoted a new generation to the cabinet and installed the conference darling, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, as party chairman. But since then she has endured a bruising summer as the government lurched from crisis to crisis, seemingly paralysed by internal disputes.

At the start of the summer she found herself locked in a damaging power struggle over migrant policy with Horst Seehofer, the interior minister and leader of her Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU).

Mr Seehofer threatened to resign and pull his party out of the coalition unless he got his way, which would have deprived Mrs Merkel of a parliamentary majority. She won that face-off, but at the cost of considerable damage to her once impregnable authority. The decisive moment was when her backbench MPs sided with her against Mr Seehofer — the same MPs who have now dealt her a telling blow. 

Mrs Merkel probably hoped she had put her troubles behind her when parliament returned to work after the summer. Instead she found herself mired in a new row over far-Right protests in Chemnitz. When Hans-Georg Maassen, the domestic intelligence chief, publicly contradicted Mrs Merkel over the riots, her main coalition partners, the Social Democrats (SPD), had had enough and demanded his dismissal.

But Mr Seehofer, seemingly hell-bent on a policy of mutual destruction, dug his heels in again. Mrs Merkel, once the most powerful woman in the world, found herself unable to sack a rebellious intelligence head. A compromise to move Mr Maassen to a more senior role at the interior ministry provoked a public outcry, and Mrs Merkel had to make an embarrassing U-turn. Her once sure touch seemed to have deserted her, and her authority was ebbing away.

What next for Mutti?

The end is unlikely to come swiftly for Mrs Merkel. She has to stand for re-election as the CDU leader at the party conference in December, but there is no obvious challenger. And the party will be reluctant to force a contest for fear it may trigger new elections: there is no guarantee Mrs Merkel’s current coalition partners would agree to serve under a new chancellor. Current polls suggest new elections now could be disastrous for the CDU. The nationalist Alternative for Germany party (AfD) stands to gain most, a prospect all the mainstream parties will be keen to avoid.

But there have already been calls for Mrs Merkel to start paving the way for her successor at December’s conference. “I expect the chancellor to tell us how she wants to manage the transition to a new chancellor candidate by 2020,” Armin Schuster, a senior CDU MP said.

The next challenge for Mrs Merkel will be key regional elections in Bavaria and Hesse next month. The CDU does not stand in Bavaria, and she will be hoping that predicted losses for the CSU in its home state will weaken her arch-rival Mr Seehofer, and perhaps even see him overthrown as party leader. But losses could also lead to renewed pressure on Mrs Merkel from her Bavarian sister party.

Ahe also faces the prospect of damaging losses for her own party in Hesse, a conservative stronghold, at the hands of the AfD. That could strengthen calls within the party to abandon her centrist approach and return to a more conservative line.

If the losses in Bavaria and Hesse are bad enough, or if her authority continues to ebb away, Mrs Merkel could surprise everyone and choose to bow out gracefully by not standing for re-election as party leader in December. If that happened, the frontrunners to succeed her would be Jens Spahn, the health minister and darling of the party’s right wing, and Ms Kramp-Karrenbauer, the party chairman, who is more in Mrs Merkel’s centrist mould.

But most analysts expect Mrs Merkel to fight on, as her mentor Helmut Kohl did in the twilight of his career. 

What about Europe?

On the European stage, Mrs Merkel’s woes are likely to accelerate a handover of power that has already started. Once the undisputed “Queen of Europe”, Mrs Merkel’s influence has waned amid her struggles at home. France’s Emmanuel Macron has already begun to displace her as Europe’s leading voice, and is her obvious successor.

In the wake of Donald Trump’s election as US president, Barack Obama flew to Berlin for a final appearance alongside Mrs Merkel in what was seen as a symbolic handing over of the torch. But it is Mr Macron, not Mrs Merkel, who has been the European leader most prepared to take on Mr Trump on the world stage.

Mr Macron has been frustrated by Mrs Merkel’s reluctance to embrace his vision for the future of the European Union, and she is unlikely to offer him any more support as she fights for her own political survival. He — or his successor — will still have to deal with whoever eventually takes over from Mrs Merkel as leader of Europe’s biggest economy.

But with Mrs Merkel fighting fires on the home front, the path is clear for Mr Macron to succeed her as Europe’s leading political figure.