IT SHOULD have been an easy homecoming for Angela Merkel. Instead, as the boos and catcalls rose from the crowd in Wittenberg marketplace, a shadow of panic crossed the face of the German conservative leader and she suddenly resembled a frightened schoolgirl who had strayed into the bad part of town. Her hand, held aloft in a friendly wave, curled into a soft fist.

For most of the year Frau Merkel has appeared a shoo-in to replace Gerhard Schröder as Chancellor — a prospect privately welcomed by the Labour Government in Britain. Her reform-minded, market-friendly politics have seemed a persuasive alternative to the tired Schröder Government. In June her Christian Democrats were a clear 21 percentage points ahead of the Chancellor ’s Social Democrats and enjoying a record 48 per cent backing.

Now the plot has begun to unravel. It would still require a near-miracle for Herr Schröder to stay in power, but Frau Merkel’s lead is shrinking — down 13 percentage points according to the latest poll — and she has embarked on the fight of her political career.

Most observers agree that her hurriedly arranged campaign visit to eastern Germany this week will be crucial. If, as now seems possible, support for the Christian Democrats evaporates in the East the election would be lost.

Eastern Germany’s disgruntled voters are instead being attracted to a left-wing party that brings together the Party of Democratic Socialists — the successor to East Germany’s communists — with a western German movement conjured up by “Red Oskar” Lafontaine, who was Herr Schröder’s Finance Minister before he flounced out of the Cabinet.

The Left Party is already registering 13 per cent support nationwide, making it the third force in German politics — and about 35 per cent in the east.

This is a paradox. Frau Merkel is the only eastern German to have risen so far in national politics, yet it is the East that may yet be her undoing.

It is, in truth, difficult for any mainstream politician to make a lasting impact on the East. The huge unemployment, the migration westwards, the chronic lack of investment, the bankruptcies and debt all make easterners resistent to conventional politics. But Frau Merkel has special handicaps.

First, she leads a quintessentially western party that appears to see the East more as a burden than an asset. One conservative politician recently blamed the East’s post-communist proletarian culture for tolerating a mother said to have killed her babies while in an alcoholic haze. This upset many, including those in the crowd of 2,000 whom Frau Merkel addressed in Wittenberg on Monday night.

An even worse clanger was dropped by Edmund Stoiber, the conservative Prime Minister of Bavaria, who said that the future Chancellor should not be chosen by the frustrated voters of the East. That pleased his Bavarian beer-tent voters and impressed some western German conservatives, but shocked the East.So when Frau Merkel strode on to the podium, she had plenty of broken china to glue — and for the most part she failed.

Her lack of charisma, which once passed for sincerity, has now become an electoral liability. The East needs enthusiasm and she has none. “We don’t want you to throw away your votes as a protest. We want you and your votes to count for something,” she told the restless rally before the heckling began again. We want a united land and so we are certainly not going to drive a wedge between us,” Frau Merkel said, stiff-shouldered and shrill.

“Go home”, yelled a knot of protesters. “Liar! Liar!”, a woman shouted.

Instead of deflecting the protests with sharp-tongued humour — as Herr Schröder does — Frau Merkel adopted a nannyish tone. “The difference between now and 15 years ago is that today you can come here of your own free will and shout all you want.”

That did not work so she staggered on. “The people who are shouting, they obviously didn’t learn anything at school. They are of no use to us.”

She still has time to shine before election day on September 18, but she needs to improve her campaigning style. Polls show that on a personal basis — and this matters when motivating eastern German voters — Herr Schröder is seen as the more attractive leader.

Frau Merkel should be the perfect conciliator. After all, she spent the first 35 years of her life in the East German communist state.

Her slightly unco-ordinated body language and her leaden use of language, but also her nose for conspiracy and suspicious nature: all that was shaped as a young activist in the communist youth movement. If there is anyone in the German conservative spectrum who can understand the eastern German psyche, it must surely be Frau Merkel.

Yet she fails to convince. In the housing estates of the East, voters want to be reassured, comforted and told they are important. Frau Merkel has yet to find the right note — and her lead is slipping away.

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