Angela Merkel’s continuity candidate, the centrist conservative Armin Laschet, has beaten one of her longest-standing rivals in the contest to lead Germany’s Christian Democratic Union. In a digitally-held party congress, Laschet beat the conservative hardliner Friedrich Merz by 521 to 466 votes in a run-off vote, following a strong speech that emphasised social cohesion and held up recent scenes from Washington DC as a warning example of divisive leadership. The third candidate on the ballot, the foreign policy specialist Norbert Röttgen, came last in the first round of votes. Once the digital vote has been ... (full story)