First off I like that the BBC introduces Merz as a "millionaire lawyer" 😆 he went to some lengths to keep his wealth out of the public eye until he finally admitted to being a millionaire, what a surprise that the head of BlackRock Germany is that rich. He still considers himself firmly a part of the middle class mind
Regarding the three way race for Merkels succession it's much of a muchness really. AKK is widely - including in the BBC piece about her - considered a pragmatic or centrist politician but that's quite far from the truth. She has the same complete lack of aura that's characteristic to her predecessor but unlike Merkel who would try to balance things towards the centre if it meant consolidating her position AKK is a lot more fundamentalist in her Christian socially conservative and transatlantic views. She might not be as vocal about it as she is on some of her other positions or as her competitors but she's neoliberal to the hilt too, the damages she caused in infrastructure and to the treasury in her home state in relatively few years are severe.
Her calm and collected demeanour makes her look reasonable next to the crass populist (and health minister) Jens Spahn who would regularly give interviews to the yellow press how he dislikes taking walks through Berlin with his husband because of macho foreigners staring or swearing at them. She definitely does not seem as extreme as Friedrich Merz who's basically the prototype of the current right wing movements as he's been pushing that agenda more than ten years ago when most of what's being said today was too crass for a bigger audience. Hes the poster child of neoliberalism, any position on the Washington Consensus you'd list and he's publicly backed it. After he lost the internal CDU battle to Merkel in 2009 he dropped out of politics and picked up a couple dozen (!) supervisory board seats and worked as chief BlackRock lobbyist and part time solicitor for Mayer Brown, a law firm that's specialised on getting people out of trouble who are involved in one of the biggest tax theft schemes (as in literally theft, not evasion - check CumEx if you're interested) ever in Europe. So yeah more or less the devil incarnate.
Make no mistake however almost all of the major political positions of them - labour rights, living wages, housing, energy and environment, traffic, police and intelligence service rights, EU politics, military adventures abroad and foreign policies in general - differ in nuances at best. So yeah if AKK really becomes the next chancellor we're fucked, and so is anyone who's still sticking around in the Union by then. I can't believe I'm already missing Merkel and Lord knows I have no love for her!
Sorry for the diatribe but you knew what'd happen when you asked! 😆
