Chancellor acknowledges disastrous state election results but vow to push on is likely to further alienate voters, and his own party

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Friedrich Merz called it a “disaster”, and that was even before the full scale of the catastrophe for himself and his conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) came into view after Sunday’s state elections.

In what one outlet called a “power move”, the German chancellor made a highly unusual televised speech just minutes after polls closed in the states of Berlin and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, attempting to get ahead of the narrative with a pledge to stay on and fight for his economic recovery programme.