Hello my name is David Ronserman and this is Talking Politics. Today we're going to be talking about two countries whose politics is in a serious state of flux, Germany and Italy.

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Joining Helen and me today we have Hans Kuntnani who's a senior fellow at Chattam House and Lucia Rubinali who is a research fellow in Cambridge but is currently in Trieste, right Lucia?

Yes.

I think we'll start with Germany. Italian politics is a reverted type. It seems to me to be pretty complicated at the moment but German politics is complicated too.

So Hans we now know the name of the person who's not necessarily going to succeed Angela Merkel as the candidate for the CDU in the next elections but is currently the leader of the party.

So tell us a bit about him and also just a bit about that dynamic because I think people outside Germany it's one of the things we find hardest to understand in that we keep discovering the name of the person who is quote unquote succeeding Angela Merkel and then that person doesn't succeed Angela Merkel.

Yes exactly.

And I think I would slightly challenge the idea that German politics is in a serious state of flux.

I mean when I've been on the podcast before I've sort of really been saying it's a serious state of continuity.

In the sense I think the election of Armin Laschet as the CDU leader is a continuation of that continuity. He's the continuity candidate.

So he's a former prime minister president of Nordrhein Westphalia and was seen as of the three candidates as being the one was closest to Merkel both sort of personally and ideologically.

So as you say it's not clear that he actually becomes the candidate for chance learning the election in September.

In fact lots of people think that the fact that he got elected as party leader increases the chances that Marcus Zürder the Bavarian Christian Democrat leader will become the candidate.

But if he were to become the candidate it would represent very much a continuation of what I call the Merkel consensus is kind of centrist consensus embodied by Merkel that has dominated German politics for the last 15 years.

So to just make the case that there is still at least the possibility of change within continuity.

That Merkel consensus how solid is it because I mean one of the things about Laschet and we'll come on in a second to the ways in which he might disrupt international geopolitical questions.

But within Germany if he is really cleaving to the center and as a work kind of grand coalition vision of politics.

There is a lot of pressure at least potential pressure on that from outside it isn't there in Germany.

I think this pressure from outside of Germany I think the consensus within Germany is still pretty strong.

I have to slightly nuance that in the sense that what a lot of people expect especially with Laschet becoming Chancellor if you were to become Chancellor is that you would have a black green coalition after September in other words a coalition of Christian Democrats and Greens.

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