Germany has a new chancellor. Center-left Social Democrat Olaf Scholz has been elected by the Bundestag as the new chancellor of Germany, replacing Angela Merkel, and will head a coalition government with the Green Party and the neoliberal Free Democrats.
Who would have believed it when Olaf Scholz was first put forward as the SPD's candidate for chancellor in August 2020? As recently as 2019, he had been defeated in the battle for the SPD chairmanship. Not only because the party wanted an explicitly left-wing leader, but also because the introverted pragmatist had never managed to win the hearts of the Social Democrat rank-and-file.
