German Chancellor Olaf Scholz insists he would ‘never’ cooperate with the far right in the way he says his rival Friedrich Merz has done. Meanwhile, Merz said working with the AfD was out of the question.

Friedrich Merz dismissed Scholz’s comments as he took the floor to deliver his speech in the Bundestag.

“What on earth was that?” he responded, describing the chancellor’s speech as “25 minutes of scripted outrage against the leader of the opposition” and accusing Scholz of “confusing the floor of the German Bundestag with a Young Socialists congress.”

Merz said that cooperation with the far-right AfD was also “out of the question” for his party. 

He blamed the rise of the far right on the failures of Scholz’s three-way coalition, which collapsed in November, saying they had pursued “left-wing politics against the discernible will of the population.”

He described Scholz and his Vice-Chancellor Robert Habeck from the Green Party as: “Two business managers who have driven the company into the ground only to go to the owners and say: ‘We want to continue doing this for another four years.’ The owners would amicably ask them to leave the company.”