Among the many astonishing upshots of the 2021 German election, the near-death of the Linkspartei stands out. It lost over 2 million votes, falling to 4.9 per cent, barely half the 9.2 per cent it received in 2017. That it remains in the Bundestag at all is because it won three constituencies directly, two in (East) Berlin and one in Leipzig, meaning that the usual 5 per cent threshold does not apply. Still, the only remaining party of the German Left, heavily divided, is about to drift into insignificance. The depth of its crisis is indicated by the fact that it won only 8 per cent of the vote among under-25s, close to the afd which ranked bottom among this cohort, on 7 per cent. Add to this that the Linkspartei was supported by only 3 per cent of those with the lowest educational qualification (Hauptschule), while it won 6 per cent, above its national average, among voters with Abitur or a university degree. And most devastating perhaps: among workers the spd won 28 per cent, the cdu/csu 23 per cent, the afd 16 per cent, and the Linkspartei—5 per cent!

The demise of the Left all of a sudden simplified a picture that had looked unprecedently disorderly before the vote. Now there was no possibility anymore of a Red–Green–Red (r2g) government coalition, much to the relief, one can be sure, of the leaders of both the spd and the Greens. Only two possible coalitions remained, each including the Greens and the fdp. One would be led by the spd under Olaf Scholz, on 25.7 per cent—up by 2 million votes, from 20.5 per cent four years ago. The other, the Black–Green–Yellow ‘Jamaica’ variant, would be led by Armin Laschet and the cdu–csu, which lost some 3 million votes, plunging to 24.1 per cent, after winning 32.9 per cent in 2017. A remote third possibility is another Grand Coalition, with Scholz as Chancellor and Laschet, or some other cdu figure, as Vice Chancellor. Nobody seems to be eager for this, however, not least as it conjures up memories of the disaster of last time round, in 2017, when the Merkel–Scholz pairing was finally hammered together a full six months after the election, after a first Jamaica attempt had failed.

On Election Eve, it was interesting to see just how traumatic the experience of the 2017 Jamaica negotiations had been for the political class. Apparently Merkel had lost control of the proceedings early on, and endless meetings ended in unending mess, with nobody knowing what had been decided, if anything at all. At some point the fdp, under its then and current leader Christian Lindner, became suspicious that Merkel had already reached a secret understanding with the Greens and planned to sideline the Liberals in the same way that she had marginalized them during her second term in office, from 2009 to 2013—as a result of which, the fdp had fallen below the 5 per cent threshold. Fearing a replay, Lindner, in a spectacular move that almost cost him his leadership, broke off the negotiations.

A short excursus on Lindner, who may be the linchpin of the next German government. Now 42 years of age, and highly instagrammable, Lindner joined the fdp as a teenager and rose fast in its ranks. He refused military service as a conscientious objector, which he later explained by his efforts, still in his teens, to launch an internet start-up firm, which however proved short-lived. Alongside studying political science at the University of Bonn, from 1999 till 2006—a doctoral thesis was started but not finished, due to his rapidly advancing political career—Lindner undertook several special military training courses to become a reserve officer in the Luftwaffe, where he was eventually promoted to Major der Reserve. He also acquired, at different points in his life, licenses as a racing driver for both cars and boats, as well as for hunting—the latter requiring, in Germany, passage of a demanding exam after following a complex curriculum of courses. In his spare time, Lindner likes driving vintage Porsches. At age 21, his start-up about to fail, Lindner was elected to the Landtag of North Rhine-Westphalia. In 2009 he became General Secretary of the fdp at the Federal level, a post from which he resigned just in time before the 2013 electoral disaster, when the fdp lost its presence in the Bundestag. A few months later, Lindner was elected its President, nobody else wanting the job. He led its return to Federal politics four years later.

With hindsight, it can be seen that 2017 was the beginning of Merkel’s end. Her party blamed her for its poor election result—32.9 per cent, down from 41.5 per cent in 2013—and for the rise of the afd, to 12.6 per cent; both related to the 2015 border opening. Next came devastating results in several Länder elections in the second half of 2018, in the wake of which Merkel resigned as party leader in exchange for being allowed to serve out her term as Chancellor. The deal, however, required her to cooperate in a transition arrangement with a successor as party chair and, ultimately, candidate for Chancellor in 2021. This went badly wrong. First Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer (akk), Merkel’s initial choice as cdu leader, tried to distance the party step by step from Merkel’s refugee policy, in preparation for the election. Merkel was not amused. Having forced akk to resign at the earliest opportunity, she ended up in early 2021 with Laschet as party head—the last man standing, apart from Merkel’s longtime enemy Friedrich Merz, a corporate lawyer and former party rival, whom she hates, perhaps because he impersonates her neoliberal past. By that stage the cdu had been worn threadbare by sixteen years under a leader deeply averse to anything programmatic, who systematically substituted personal loyalty for political principles. Laschet, then, had to run on a platform of both political renewal and firm allegiance to Merkel, to avoid being punished by her, as akk had been. This, as we now know, proved too much for him, as it might have for anyone.

In fact, things could have been even worse for the cdu. A few weeks before election day, it had been hovering at around 20 per cent in the polls, close to the Greens and well behind the spd, at 25 per cent. If in the end Laschet almost caught up with the spd, this was because of a last-minute campaign to frighten undecided voters with the prospect of an r2g coalition—a prospect Scholz could not rule out for tactical reasons. The media also played a role. At first the Greens were everybody’s darling, and backed by the vast majority of young people employed in the public-broadcasting system. Then the media dismantled both Annalena Baerbock and Laschet for various blunders during the campaign, allowing Scholz, a man without obvious Eigenschaften, to sneak into first place unnoticed. Finally, led by the faz, the press caught up to join in Laschet’s red-scare siren song.

What about Söder, the self-styled Bavarian strongman, whose political opportunism equals even Merkel’s? Compared to him, Laschet was bound to look like a born weakling, with a macho factor of exactly zero. Söder made the most of this. In the end, however, it was not enough to overcome his fundamental handicap: being from the csu, the smaller of the two so-called ‘sister parties’. Even if he now manages to push Laschet aside, a decisive test awaits him in the 2023 Bavarian Landtag elections. Whatever he does at present must help him win a decisive majority on this home turf; if he fails to do so, his career will end abruptly. Otherwise, he will certainly grab for the leadership and get it; remember that Länder first ministers can take the floor in the Bundestag any time they want, even outside the official list of speakers.