Markus Söder is the one to watch in German politics. The ascent of the Bavarian Minister-President and leader of the Bavarian Christian Social Union is probably the closest modern Germany has come to Macron-style disruption. The situation is less dramatic than France in 2017 — there is no great disaffection with Chancellor Angela Merkel or with politics in general — but there is a sense that the country needs a shift in direction.
Bavaria symbolises that new direction. When I grew up in Germany’s deep west in the 1960s and 1970s, we went to Bavaria on holiday and admired its quaint backwardness. We did not take it very seriously until the Munich Olympics in 1972. Since then, this vast rural state has turned itself into the centre of Germany’s hi-tech industries, located mostly around state capital Munich.
Mr Söder is not particularly known as a tech guru himself, but he is distinctly modern in his approach to politics.
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