'Thatcher Lite' to Topple Schröder

Germany's conservative opposition leader Angela Merkel yesterday emerged as the undisputed challenger to the chancellor Gerhard Schröder, after his dramatic decision on Sunday to seek an early general election.

Mrs Merkel yesterday won the backing of party rivals who could have run against Mr Schröder. She is likely to win their formal endorsement when Germany's opposition parties meet next week.

Mr Schröder revealed that he intended to get parliament dissolved before the summer recess on July 1 - with a view to going to the polls by September 18. Under German law, Mr Schröder has to lose a confidence vote before he can persuade the president, Horst Köhler, to dissolve parliament. The general election was not due until autumn 2006.

The chancellor's decision to seek an early election followed his party's crushing defeat over the weekend in the key industrial state of North Rhine-Westphalia. Mr Schröder's Social Democrats (SPD) had ruled here for 39 years - but were turfed out by Mrs Merkel's Christian Democratic Union (CDU). Germans were yesterday coming to terms with the likelihood of another, probably long, period of centre-right rule - with Mrs Merkel as the country's first ever woman chancellor.

Yesterday, however, her biographer, Wolfgang Stock, told the Guardian that any conservative coalition led by Mrs Merkel would not be as radical as her political opponents made out. "It would be very, very light Thatcherism," he said. "For a start she would never fight the unions like Mrs Thatcher did because there are many union members in her own party."

"She also grew up in East Germany which means she has a totally different perspective on (West) German political problems."

But like Mrs Thatcher, Mrs Merkel's male political opponents had made the fatal mistake of underestimating her, he added.

Born in Hamburg, Mrs Merkel grew up in East Germany after her father - a Lutheran priest - chose to move there. She only entered politics after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the communist regime, joining the CDU in 1990, and rising rapidly under Germany's then chancellor Helmut Kohl to become minister for women, and then environment minister.

In 2002 she stepped aside to allow her conservative rival Edmund Stoiber, the leader of the CDU's sister party, the Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU), to challenge Mr Schröder for the chancellorship. Mr Stoiber lost. Afterwards, Mrs Merkel became the opposition's leader.

Yesterday the battle lines for the election were becoming clearer, with Mr Schröder presenting the poll as a choice between Germany's existing social market model, albeit with some painful reforms, and his opponents' attempts to destroy the welfare state.

The message appeared to be: If you think we're bad, the other lot are far worse.

For her part, Mrs Merkel cast the election as a referendum on which party was more likely to reduce unemployment, currently running at 5 million, and create growth.

Mrs Merkel is also a fan of George Bush. "She is absolutely devoted to the trans-Atlantic relationship. The rift between Germany and the Bush administration over Iraq would be repaired within weeks," Dr Stock predicted. Even with a Merkel victory, though, there would be no German troops in Iraq, he added.