ANGELA MERKEL has summoned an emergency strategy meeting of her top advisers today to work out how to block the astonishing comeback of Chancellor Schröder with less than a week to go before the general election in Germany.

Suddenly it seems that the election might become a cliff-hanger: Herr Schröder’s Social Democrats have whittled away a 20 per cent lead enjoyed by Frau Merkel’s Christian Democrats to barely 7 per cent.

“The winds are turning,” Herr Schröder told a Sunday newspaper. “I’ve been feeling more support everywhere I go.”

However, the polls are notoriously fickle at this stage of the campaign since about 20 per cent of voters make up their minds in the last two days.

Frau Merkel senses enough trouble ahead to call in her closest advisers for a meeting that will dictate the pace of the final stages of the campaign.

Significantly, she is seeking the advice of women: Beate Baumann, 41, her chief of staff, Eva Christiansen, 35, her spin- doctor, and Hildegard Müller, her point of contact in Germany’s most populous state, North Rhine Westphalia.

Unlike Margaret Thatcher, Frau Merkel has built up a strong female network that is supposed to polish her public image, checkmate the Chancellor, and, above all, help the conservative leader to sidestep the booby traps laid by envious male colleagues. Disgruntled regional chieftains, locked out of her decision-making circle, have started to call Frau Merkel’s aides “the girls’ camp”.

If Frau Merkel takes power on her terms next weekend, Germany — a society run by males for males, according to the feminist Alice Schwarzer — will be poised for a female revolution. Glass ceilings are expected to crack in politics, business, culture and journalism.

First, the election has to be won. Through Frau Baumann, the word has been passed to regional Christian Democrat prime ministers that they should rule out this week any prospect of a coalition with the ruling Social Democrats.

Frau Merkel wants every leading Christian Democrat to extol the benefits of the Free Democrats, her preferred junior partner. Current polls show that a Christian Democrat and Free Democrat line-up would fail to produce an absolute majority — so Christian Democrat votes have to be mobilised and Free Democrats helped. A Free Democrat congress yesterday tried to raise the party’s profile: they seemed confident, despite scoring 6 per cent in the polls, that the Free Democrat Wolfgang Gerhardt would become the next foreign minister under a Chancellor Merkel within the next fortnight.

Frau Baumann is a linguist (who studied for a year in Cambridge) and her position has become pivotal: she translates the wishes of the sometimes clumsy, always overworked Frau Merkel to the election machine. She can be seen at press conferences stage-directing Frau Merkel with discreet gestures. The first text messages exchanged after a television appearance are always with Frau Baumann. “She lives and breathes Angela,” a friend said.

The key role over the coming days will be taken by Frau Christiansen. The former journalist has the task of raising the left-wing spectre in the run up to the election to frighten voters into the conservative camp. Chancellor Schröder has ruled out any deal with the “Left Party”, led by his former Finance Minister Oskar Lafontaine. “I don’t believe him,” Frau Merkel said at the weekend, primed by her spin-doctor.

WOMEN AT WORK

Hildegard Müller, 38, first woman head of the youth wing of the Christian Democrats, now an influential MP tipped for Cabinet job

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