Angela’s Horst of troubles THE next election for Germany’s parliament, the Bundestag, is less than a year off, but as the country mercifully lacks America’s interminable primary system, its campaign season is only now getting underway. The kick-off was a gathering on November 4th of Bavaria’s centre-right party, the Christian Social Union (CSU). The party, led by the Bavarian premier, Horst Seehofer (pictured, right), hoped to appeal to conservatives with tough talk on immigration. But one figure was conspicuously absent. For the first time since 2000, the CSU did not invite Angela Merkel, the boss of the Christian Democrats (CDU) and Germany’s chancellor.
The CDU is the CSU’s national sister party, and the two back Mrs Merkel as a bloc in Bundestag elections. But since September 2015, when the chancellor opened Germany’s borders to refugees, Mr Seehofer has become her most vexing critic. At the CSU’s convention in November 2015, he harangued her for nearly 15 minutes with demands for a limit to the number of refugees Germany would accept, addressing her with the informal pronoun Du.
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The Economist: Europe
