574. Germany’s Political Disaster and Can the Lib Dems Fight Back?

Should Merz be replaced as Keir Starmer was? Should Friedrich Merz, the chancellor of Germany, be replaced? And this, of course, is in the wake of this catastrophic election result in the province of Mecklenburg-West Pomerania.

Yeah.

And how do you say that in German?

Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.

Well, it's very hard to replace him if he doesn't want to go, because the only way to do it would be to have a vote of confidence, which he loses, and then you would almost certainly be forced into an election, which you would also, on these results, clearly lose.

And, and the results, just quickly as an explainer before you do the commentary, AfD, the Alternative for Deutschland, the far-right party, thirty-eight point two percent.

SPD, the traditional kind of Labour Party equivalent, thirty-five point five percent.

And the CDU, which is a traditional Tory equivalent, which is Friedrich Merz's own party, and this is running in Angela Merkel's own state, and she was, of course, the CDU leader, right, got below five percent, four point nine percent, lost all its seats.

Yeah.

All its seats.

So I mean, it, it's sort of unimaginable.

It would be like, um, the Tories being, I don't know, wiped out in a key seat where one of their leaders had been.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

No, it, it is, it's, it is unimaginable.

I mean, if you think that when Fiona and I were in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern a few months ago, the hotel that we stayed in had a massive portrait of Angela Merkel on the wall.

It's like her territory, and she won.

She was an MP there for thirty years.

She was four terms as chancellor.

And in little or no time, they've gone to a place...

This is the first time ever the CDU does have, have, will have no representation in a regional parliament.

And then before we come back to Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, there was this other election in Berlin, which is its own regional parliament, which was won by Die Linke, which is this very left-wing party.

Um, and this is, again, was previously Christian Democrats, previously CDU.

Also there, the S- the Social Democrat Party did really badly.