By courting the far right, the man tipped to be Germany’s next chancellor may have sealed his own downfall | Florian Ranft

Conservative Friedrich Merz shattered a political taboo. His blunder gives the centre-left a chance in the 23 February election

There are moments in every election campaign when the fate of a key protagonist takes a decisive turn, often after an unforced error. There was Rishi Sunak's overly hasty return from D-day commemorations in France for a TV interview, and, in Germany, Armin Laschet's unfortunate laughter during a 2021 visit to a flooded town that marked the beginning of the end for the then Christian Democratic Union (CDU) frontrunner.

The current CDU leader, Friedrich Merz, who is the polls' favourite to become the next chancellor after Germany's general election on 23 February, may have had his moment of truth when his proposed crackdown on asylum seekers was narrowly passed by the Bundestag with the full support of the far-right Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD).

Florian Ranft is a member of the management board at Das Progressive Zentrum, a thinktank based in Berlin