Angela Merkel's legacy is a polarised Germany now verging on the ungovernable

If a week is a long time in politics, then 13 years is an aeon. Steady as she goes has been the mark of Angela Merkel’s long tenure at the top in Germany. Today, she described her decision to resign the leadership of her Christian Democratic Party while holding on to Germany’s chancellorship as “unprecedented”. In reality it is unviable.

The leader of Germany’s liberal Free Democrats, Christian Lindner, suggested Merkel was resigning from the wrong post. Can she really lose control of her party while trying to stay in charge of the country?

Instead of setting out a clear timetable for a successor in power as her Christian Democrats have hobbled from one electoral setback to another, Merkel has lit the touch-paper for an explosive and divisive debate inside her party over where it should go in the future and who should lead it there.

A Merkel Mark II is not on the cards. In fact, her endorsement would be the kiss of death to any hopeful.

But the woes of the Christian Democrats are part of a bigger crisis of the German political system. Focus on Merkel’s attempt to choreograph her departure distracts from the fracturing of the German body politic going on under her tenure.

The German electorate is splintering. Instead of two dominant parties alternating in power with a junior partner, six parties now sit both in the Berlin Bundestag and the state parliaments. (Bavaria has seven, since two parties to the Right of Merkel’s local allies have seats in the Munich parliament). Both the CDU and SPD have shrunk so much that the Social Democrats breathed a sigh of relief at scraping just under 20 per cent in Hesse this weekend and the local CDU proclaimed 27 per cent a “mandate” to govern.

The Greens have begun to emerge as the alternative to any centre-Left party, while the Alternative for Germany (AfD) is rendering the CDU incapable of getting the 40 per cent plus needed for a secure coalition. Like the ex-Communist Left, the AfD is a pariah to the other parties, but that makes cobbling coalitions together out of the CDU, SPD, Greens and FDP very difficult because they disagree on key issues and any alliance rarely has more than half the seats across the country.

It is not only in Berlin that decision-making is getting fiendishly difficult. Brussels has relied on Merkel to give a lead in moments of crisis. Greeks certainly resented the German Chancellor’s role in setting the terms for the handling of their financial debacle, but it was done. Italy’s euro-rules busting budget is now on the EU Commission’s agenda and the strongman in Rome, Matteo Salvini, has not disguised his glee at Merkel’s discomfort. With no-one really in power in Berlin, Brussels lacks a firm hand to whip in the rest of Europe.

Donald Trump won’t be sorry to see Merkel go. His US critics had looked to her to lead a European bloc limiting the President’s unilateralist actions. It is difficult to see Merkel’s successor in Berlin or France’s Macron taking on such a role. For instance, Merkel has announced an arms embargo on Saudi Arabia following the Khashoggi killing but Macron dismissed calls for France to halt weapons' sales to the Kingdom.

Decision-making about Brexit could become more fraught if the delicate parliamentary arithmetic at Westminster becomes writ large in Europe.

Impasse looks set to be Angela Merkel’s legacy at home and in the EU. She has presided over the fragmentation of the political spectrum inside Germany which raises the spectre of ungovernability in Europe’s power-house. By trying to cling to the chancellorship after December, Merkel will deepen that troubling trend. Her slow-motion departure won’t reverse the growing polarisation of politics across the EU which marked her 13 years as the group’s dominant political personality.

Longevity in office and a lasting legacy don’t always coincide. Margaret Thatcher so changed the terms of debate that New Labour came to power offering to do Thatcherism better than John Major. “Merkelism” is already fading like the Cheshire Cat’s grin. Her likely successors in the CDU are already running as anti-Merkel candidates. The Social Democrats see their survival in distancing themselves from her even as they cling to office in the twilight of her coalition.

For years Merkel lectured her colleagues that decisions should only be taken when you were confident of the consequences. Even she cannot be sure of what comes next for her party, her country or the continent. The only thing she promises now is that she’ll never take up another political post in Germany or the EU. Could her 13 years in power have been the road to nowhere?