Germany’s troubled Social Democrats (SPD) start choosing a new leader on Monday after Andrea Nahles stepped down, with a membership appalled by plummeting popularity agitating for the party to quit Chancellor Angela Merkel’s scrappy coalition.
Nahles, the most vocal backer of the SPD’s reluctant decision to form a third grand coalition with Merkel’s conservatives, announced she would quit after a disastrous showing at last weekend’s European elections.
Voters have punished the SPD for its decision to step in as a coalition partner of last resort with a series of ever more disastrous poll showings, culminating last weekend in the party being toppled in its stronghold city of Bremen after 70 years.
“I believe a coalition walk-out has to come,” said Simone Lange, mayor of the northern town of Flensburg, who challenged Nahles for the party leadership at the contest last year.
“The question is when is the right time to do it.”
The options facing the party, whose leaders were meeting to start choosing a new leader, are unappealing.