ANGELA MERKEL, leader of Germany’s conservatives,emerged last night as the narrow winner of a crucial television debate with Gerhard Schröder, removing the last major obstacle to an election victory this month.

Again and again, Frau Merkel — previously regarded as an uncertain public performer — threw the Chancellor on the defensive.

Twenty million viewers watched as Herr Schröder struggled to regain the initiative in what increasingly seems to be an unwinnable election. “You cannot seriously believe that 5 million unemployed is satisfactory,” she blurted into the middle of a long list of the achievements of the Social Democrat-Green government.

“You are just talking down Germany and that is so dangerous!” replied an obviously bruised Chancellor. Frau Merkel made a direct appeal to the German people: “We need a new mentality. We have to say what can be done instead of why things cannot be done.”

The 51-year-old physicist’s debating success rested on her ability to suck the Chancellor into detailed discussion of tax regulations and deny him the chance to pose as a statesman.

Frau Merkel’s one vulnerable point was on the role of women: some members of her proposed cabinet have clear ideas about the need for them to stay at home. But that did not alter the fact that Frau Merkel is now poised to become the most powerful German woman since the formidable Brunhilde, who ruled the Germanic tribes in the seventh century.

Television has rarely played such a vital role in German politics. With his Social Democrats lagging 11 per cent behind in the opinion polls, the Chancellor was forced to use his 90-minute performance to persuade millions of wavering voters that he was the most confident and able leader of the world’s third-largest economy.

German electors seem to respect his doggedness and perhaps some of the 36 per cent of undecided voters will give him the benefit of the doubt on September 18.

Yet the arithmetic was solidly against him as he strode into the studio and flashed his wolfish smile. Frau Merkel’s Christian Democrats are scoring 43 per cent of the vote and the party’s preferred partners, the liberal Free Democrats, are on six per cent. That easily outnumbers the Social Democrats (32 per cent) and their partners, the Greens (7 per cent).

Herr Schröder is personally more popular than Frau Merkel and can radiate warmth in a way that she cannot. But the opinion polls show clearly that Germans are fed up with the Social Democrat-Green Government, with its aura of stagnation. All Frau Merkel had to do was dodge the bullets.

She spent the past few days preparing for the duel. A retired TV newsreader taught her how to stress certain words to escape her usual flat delivery. The star hairdresser Udo Walz, who also cuts Herr Schröder’s hair, has feathered her Cromwellian cut. Make-up artists have changed her eyeliner while her dress designer, Anna von Griessheim, has put her into warm fruity colours so that she can brand her campaign the “apricot revolution”.

No one expected Frau Merkel to emerge as a charismatic heroine last night and that was to her advantage. As long as she did not fall from the podium, she was bound to score simply by making the Chancellor appear overly slick.

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