Olaf Scholz has just pulled the plug on his coalition and polls suggest his party will lose the upcoming snap election. Yet among fellow Social Democrats, the German chancellor has rarely been so popular.
The government crisis that culminated last week with Scholz calling time on the three-party alliance plunged Germany into a new phase of turbulence. But ironically it also reinforced his status within his own party, which still plans to field him as candidate for chancellor early next year.
The support for Scholz was on full display at an emotional meeting of the SPD parliamentary group last week when he was given a standing ovation by MPs.
Jens Spahn, an MP for the opposition Christian Democrats (CDU) and a former health minister, described the scene as “surreal”.
“Here is Olaf Scholz, a failed chancellor, his coalition has just broken down, he’s sacked his finance minister and his SPD thinks it’s a cause for celebration?” Spahn told the Financial Times.
Others, too, have expressed surprise that the party still backs Scholz. TV presenter Micky Beisenherz compared him to Bruce Willis in the film The Sixth Sense. He “goes to work every day even though he’s long dead,” he wrote on X. “He just doesn’t know it yet.”