Maybe his mistake is similar to that of our previous prime minister, Keir Starmer: thinking that emulating right-wing populism will take votes from them. It didn’t work for Starmer and maybe Merz will find the same thing.

It certainly looks like this is what he’s doing. But I don’t know the guy well enough to be certain whether he’s incompetent or just a cynical bastard; it’s hard to believe that the head of a large and generally successful country doesn’t know what’s what when it comes to power politics - that’s the core skill of any successful politician.