Commentary Politicians who aspire to lead their centre-right parties into the deep left might first consider the electoral cataclysm that has taken place in Germany over the past six years. Departing German Chancellor Angela Merkel has left her Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party a husk of its previous heights in 2013 when it fell just five seats short of a majority in the national Bundestag. To put that in perspective, majorities in Germany are rare, last achieved by the Konrad Adenauer-led CDU in the West German elections of 1957. To say it has all been downhill since 2013 for the CDU would be putting it lightly. In federal elections in 2017 and earlier this week, the CDU vote (and that of its sister Bavarian party, the Christian Social Union) fell from 42 percent nationally to just 24 percent. Their seats in the Bundestag have also declined by over 40 percent …