The unprecedented bombshell Bundestag vote on Tuesday that briefly paused the confirmation of Friedrich Merz as Germany’s new chancellor spotlights cracks within Berlin’s post-war polity. Indeed, the centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) leader was elected as the country’s 10th post-war chancellor in a second vote held later in the day.

But the dramatic suspense of a few hours, notwithstanding a secret ballot, inevitably fuelled speculation as to the six dissenters who denied Merz the 316 votes he needed to win a parliamentary majority. The stark truth is that these were MPs either from Merz’s own CDU or from its sister party, the Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU), or their arch rival, the Social........

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