Germany’s CDU leader takes fightback to the boxing ring in bid to win over a disenchanted public

The race appears to be wide open in September’s German elections, with numerous possible outcomes, as the Christian Democrat candidate founders

Christian Democratic Union (CDU) leader and candidate for chancellor Armin Laschet boxes with a trainer during his visit to a children's and youth's boxing camp (POOL/AFP via Getty Images)

With his once-promising campaign coming apart at the seams amid a steep slide in opinion polls just six weeks before Germany’s election, conservative party leader Armin Laschet put on a pair of boxing gloves and climbed into a ring the other day to try to show his fighting spirit at the start of the race’s hot phase.

But the soft and tentative jabs that Laschet cautiously threw at his taller sparring partner in Frankfurt on Wednesday did nothing to dispel the candidate’s lingering image as a lightweight. Wearing leather dress shoes, business trousers and a pressed white shirt in the ring after removing his suit jacket, Laschet looked as flat-footed and out of place inside the ropes as he has been on the outside.

“Boxers know how to take a punch,” Laschet later told reporters covering the inauspicious start of his campaign in Frankfurt at a youth boxing club in a depressed section of town. “They know how to take a punch and yet still concentrate on the fight. That’s what’s in store for us for the next six weeks.”