How Angela Merkel remains one of world's most successful political leaders

There are very few political leaders who have perfected the art of having their political cake and eating it too. German Chancellor Angela Merkel is one of these.

Internationally, she is renowned as the leader of Europe who seemingly single-handedly rehabilitated Germany’s international reputation by welcoming refugees with the catchphrase “we can do it”. With electoral pressure building, however, she publicly distanced herself from this stance as the CDU/CSU party faithful sent back the message that they were not so sure.

Now, by accepting their demand for a Bundestag vote, she has outflanked Martin Schulz’s Social Democrats by securing the passage of marriage equality as one of her government’s achievements, despite openly voting against it herself. The issue has been effectively neutralised.

Before marriage equality had arisen as an issue, Merkel had also done the same with immigration and the hot-button issue of asylum seekers. As one report put it, Merkel’s “summer of welcome” that saw asylum seekers march across Europe to reach the safe-haven of Germany has been followed by a long winter of conservative base-pleasing changes to the country’s political asylum laws. These have made it much tougher to successfully claim refugee status and much easier for unsuccessful asylum seekers to be deported to countries such as Afghanistan.

Pushed by circumstances to the centre, Merkel’s CDU/CSU coalition has now steered back to the right on refugees. Given her 2010 statement that multiculturalism has “utterly failed”, this seems to be where she would prefer it to stay.

Merkel, who has been German chancellor for a remarkable 12 years, is facing an election in September. Electorally, her right-ward shift on migration has largely defused the threat from Germany’s rabidly anti-immigration, far-right “Alternative for Germany” (AfD) party, which has also been hit hard by internal divisions.
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