This is Spectator Radio and you're listening to The Spectator podcast with Lara Prendergast.

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Hello and welcome to The Spectator podcast. I'm Lara Prendergast.

So as Angela Merkel steps down as party leader, we look at what her legacy will be and whether the EU project can survive without her.

We also look at WhatsApp and why it's made it harder for MPs to plot.

And finally, we ask whether the Brits should be allowed to forage for wild mushrooms.

First, Europe's mutty is stepping down. After dismal election results for her party, the CEDU, Angela Merkel announced that she is resigning as party leader.

She's been Germany's chancellor and Europe's de facto leader for 13 years.

So, what legacy does she leave behind and can anyone

succeed her leadership? In this week's issue, Douglas Murray argues that her departure is the end of

the Federalist EU project. He joins me now, together with Sophie Pedder, the economist Paris Bureau

Chief and Emmanuel Macron's biographer. So Douglas, you start your piece by talking about the end of the Merkel project.

Can you tell us a bit more about what that project is and why it's become quite so unpopular?

Well, the argument I make of my piece is that Angela Merkel has really been holding a vision of the EU,

not the EU itself, but a vision of the EU together in recent years during

her very considerable reign. And now this week, of course, she's after a political drubbing for her

party in Hess. She's announced that she's going to, first of all, step down as party leader and also

will not seek re-election as Chancellor in 2021,

thus putting a limit on her role and her time as Chancellor.

She's been in this position, of course, since 2005, and as leader of her party since 2000,

this is an extraordinary political achievement by any estimation.

And that has to be given credit.

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