A blend of Starmer and Sunak, with a touch of Blair: Meet Olaf Scholz, the man likely to succeed Merkel

A familiar face at home but a relative unknown internationally, is Olaf Scholz ready to step into Merkel’s shoes? Sean O’Grady explores the politics and career of the man leading the race to become Germany’s next chancellor

Seat of power: Olaf Scholz, leader of the socialist SPD (AFP via Getty)

Politics is full of surprises, and not the least of them is the strange rebirth of social democracy in Germany. As the largest economy in Europe faces a general election on Sunday 26 September, the Social Democratic Party (SPD) seems set to be the shock winner – albeit on only around 25 per cent of the vote. For the first time since the demise of Gerhard Schroeder in 2005, Germany will have a person of the left, Olaf Scholz, at the helm, though inevitably governing in some sort of coalition.

It is quite a turn-up for the books, given that the SPD, like so much of the European left, has seemed to be in terminal decline for so long. With their voter base eroded by industrial change and nationalistic populism, centre-left and progressive parties the world over have been written out of the political script. The victory of Joe Biden and the more muted re-emergence of the German left give their fraternal partners globally a little ground for hope for a break in the clouds.

It makes a change. In recent years, given the SPD’s feeble electoral performance, it has only managed to hold on to power and influence at all by the grace of Angela Merkel, who found the various alternatives too distasteful and thus had to prop up the old rival party. It was almost an act of charity, and a bit of a humiliation for such a historic movement. Now, though, it is the SPD which is in the ascendant (or at least doing less badly), with the Christian Democrats, now bereft in the face of the imminent departure of “mutti”.