Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: Scholz loses his temper as Germany’s migration debate rages

Olaf Scholz in the Bundestag (Credit: Bundestag TV)

Ding ding! It’s not just in Westminster that the debate over illegal migration has got politicians tearing chunks out of each other. Over in Berlin, an emotional Olaf Scholz got up in front of the Bundestag to give his opponents a piece of his mind.

The Chancellor’s speech was meant to be about the budget, but soon veered off track onto migration. In front of a room of rowdy, heckling parliamentarians, the Chancellor attacked the CDU leader of the opposition, Friedrich Merz:

‘You are the type of politician who believes that he has solved the migration issue simply with an interview in Bild am Sonntag. That’s not how it works in reality!’ Scholz shouted. ‘When you are one of those politicians who has barely left the newspaper’s offices before forgetting what it is that you have proposed, because you never had any intention to deal with the problem – that is bad politics!’

Ouch!

Scholz’s rant happened a day after he held talks between his traffic light coalition government and Merz’s CDU to try and agree on how to proceed with Germany’s border crackdown and whether turning away migrants and asylum seekers before they arrived on German soil was possible.

Steerpike
Written by
Steerpike

Steerpike is The Spectator's gossip columnist, serving up the latest tittle tattle from Westminster and beyond. Email tips to steerpike@spectator.co.uk or message @MrSteerpike

Topics in this article

Comments

Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months

Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.

Already a subscriber? Log in