Horst Seehofer’s resignation signals the end of the German political elites

The German politicians who were once larger-than-life figures, dominating their political parties as easily as they dominated Germany’s political discourse, are fast becoming dinosaurs.

First it was Martin Schulz, who resigned as chairman of the Social Democratic Party in February after some backbenchers opposed the party’s decision to enter into another grand coalition with Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union. That coalition deal was the product of a particularly humiliating loss for the SPD in the 2017 German federal elections, where it barely scrounged 20 per cent of the vote. Then it was Merkel, the dominant force of German politics for over a decade, who decided to give up the leadership of the CDU after her party’s dismal showing in the Hesse regional elections. And now it’s Christian Social Union head Horst Seehofer’s turn, a month after his Bavarian-based party lost supporters in a region it had dominated since the second world war.