angle merkel the leader of her coalition partner quits unexpectedly threatening to push michael's teetering government into chaos opinion polls show both major parties in her grand coalition hemorrhaging support the chancellor insists chill stay the course and stick with the alliance with the social democrats this after andre and allison threw in the town just 14 months after she became the 1st woman to head the s.p.d. . i'm rebecca ritter's welcome to the program german chancellor angela merkel's governing coalition took another beating today the leader of its junior partner the social democrats an ounce of her resignation leaving the future of both the party and germany's government in doubt the social democrats and merkel conservatives were once the country's 2 biggest parties lately they have been plunging in opinion polls but merkel's promise to keep on with the task of governing. after

a year in the top job with the s.p.d. 100 now this she's standing down because she feels she can't go on. discussions in the parliamentary group and feedback from the party have shown that i no longer have the necessary support to carry out my duties on monday i will therefore resign as chair of the s.p.d. and on tuesday i will resign as chair of the s.p.d. parliamentary group nala says resignation follows the party's dismal performance in last month's european elections its worst ever showing at the polls given city vivisected results that we have so far are extremely disappointing for the s.p.d. everyone knows that the surveys regarding our party have not been good in the last . our task was to try and work our way out of these poor survey results sadly despite all our work we didn't manage to swing things around. during the initial. surprise. the s.p.d.

was once a big tent party but years of playing 2nd fiddle in chancellor angela merkel's government have left the social democrats struggling to stay relevant new polling puts the s.p.d. a just 12 percent a distant 3rd behind the greens and conservatives coalition has found it difficult to make headway since its painful formation after the 2017 german election merkel wants to see out her final term until 2021 years we will continue the government's work with all seriousness and we will above all do so with a great sense of responsibility for. the issues we have to solve our for germany and europe and the rest of the world with this mindset we will continue working the holes that's likely to prove no easy task is specially with perth the main parties seeing their support ebbing away. let's bring in our political correspondents now

hans brant who's at the social democrat headquarters in berlin and he would mean the studio is our in cape brady hi kate thank you both for joining us once i'll start with you how is the s.p.d. coping with this shock and now it's meant. well 1st of all there was a sense of shock obviously i think there were disputes going on within the party everybody knew that andrea nodders was their position was threatened but nobody expected her to resign today so the party has been in the kind of damage control scramble for the whole day there have been emergency meetings in the party headquarters here behind me all day long that will continue tomorrow morning and at the moment it seems as though the politic is going to try and find a kind of interim solution to a point to some senior members of the party that don't have ambitions themselves to the major positions that are underway and all this is not all resigning from and then to find some time to consider a. succession will comedy as it were in the next couple of weeks or months

now k b s p days the junior partner in john's langley mccool's coalition what does this mean for her government well if what self said if was to go by that it really seems that she's keen to push on with this government until the end of this term and that will of course will also be her 4th and final term as chancellor and that would go until 2021 but of course this resignation from andrea knowledge today has of course sent tremors through this coalition and has yet again brought into question the credibility of this government is it still stable enough to leave many and was even stable enough in the first a place of course there were always concerns and criticism from both sides but particularly from the more left leaving wing of the social democrats that going into this government this governing coalition once again wouldn't give the social democrats the time and the space to

redefine its profile but some that's also something which the conservative c.d.u. is also trying to do right now so we're already have to say exactly how. and of course the 2 coalition parties actually intend on that continuing forward with this very fragile coalition now hands as we just heard merkel is very cane she wants to keep the government going wants to continue their work but how likely is it that the social democrats will want to continue being a part of the coalition. well there is a very very strong faction within the social democrats that has been saying for a very long time already that being in the grand coalition. is no good for the social democrats because they lose their political profile that all the achievements that these grand coalitions to achieve all these goals if they do achieve are really given credit i think they give credit to are going to knock a lot of the social democrats so it was in fact under they are not as who pushed

the party into this grand coalition they were serious. when the scar tissue was formed with her gone all there's a big challenge that action that wants to get out of this grand coalition will get a lot stronger and there are many commentators are they expect this government not to last the year well it's not the 1st time the coalition's been in trouble quite certainly is and it wasn't so long ago we were sat here for what felt like months but it was just a number of weeks in which this government found itself in the middle of it and they a crisis last summer it was put to the brink of collapse over that migration. question between that and that was a large issue to large debate between actually within the conservatives between the interior ministry ministers sorry and the chancellor and of course these issues seem to keep popping up time and time again which is why the credibility of this coalition keeps being brought into question well under analysis was the 1st female

leader of the german social democrats and before we talk more about her decision to resign let's take a quick look back at her career. it was the high point of her career in april 20000 and to be anonymous became the head of the social democrats for the 1st time in the party's long history a woman who was at the helm is going schooling in the we're going to make it together we are strong we will succeed that's my promise. her commitment to the. social democrats was unwavering born into a working class family in former west germany now is founded the 1st local s.p.d. association in a conservative district her political views have typically ranged from far left to moderate. in 1905 the newly elected socialist youth chairwoman professed her feet and karl marx. frank ocean angles the philosopher said his name will live on through the centuries and so will his work i'm certain of this. she proved her

resilience both in past leadership functions and as labor minister in the previous coalition after the party's dismal showing in germany's 2017 elections it was clear she would emerge as a key player. yesterday the s.p.d. is needed i told you so you know but more bad alexion results left deep wounds in the s.p.d. after andrea analysis fought for her party to enter another governing coalition with the center right the s.p.d. suffered heavy losses in state elections now mrs hope of reenergizing the party failed to win over voters now that her own party members have lost faith in her leadership now liz has thrown in the towel after 20 years. and ran alice was one of 3 leaders the us payday has had only 2 years but is this crisis really about her or is this a crisis of the german social democrats in general. i think one has to say it's

a little bit of both clearly the social democrats are deeply in crisis has been losing votes for years there's been a lot of infighting in the party for years that's been struggling to redefine their policies from the kind of traditional social democratic left wing positions which have been failing all over europe in fact if you look at france for instance the socialist there have all but disappeared but at the same time it's also a problem that i think one can put at the door frankly are not as she is rather abrasive personality she is a political insider and she's gotten to the position that she has through moving and tactical maneuvers within the party that have so far been accepted in very successful but in recent times she's made several political mistakes and clearly called play within the party has not been successful in recent days and rather than being voted out of office in the next couple of days she seems to have decided to

call it a day immediately. members of the social democrats had mixed reaction to nonis this surprise announcement let's take a listen. i was never a fan of nonis but the way they treated her recently they would never have done to him and 100 percent of what. they think it is and i think it's a good step towards a new start for the s.p.d. now all votes can be counted democratically and the student in the office all man's business and i do think it's going to be s.p.d. will go on to go into. hands one of the women there saying that no man would have been treated the way under you know us was treated what do you say to that. yes i think there's an element of truth in that social democrat party has been governed has been controlled by fairly old men for a long time and especially in recent days the personal attacks against andrea and

others even in public have become really quite sharp quite vitriolic and i think there is an element of how shall i say of anti woman's sentiment in there from from the establishment in the party at the same time one does have to say that she does have as i say don't have braces for a personality she doesn't always choose who would say well she can use words that also. damaging to the party and to other people that she's talking about so it's also part of her personality but i think the factor that she is of the fact that she's a woman was a was a serious part of this dispute so kate where to from here what happens next for the german government has said we're going to be some soul searching now not only on the social democrat side but also from the concept of it seems that yet another close call for the government has been avoided but that's only for now so let's see how long this can keep stable for data kate brady and hands brown thank you both

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