Kohl's crowning moment fails to ignite party faithful

Europe's longest-serving leader was endorsed yesterday as the German Christian Democrats' candidate for a fifth term. However, Helmut Kohl's "coronation feast" was a tepid affair. At the CDU conference in Leipzig, Imre Karacs hears a swelling chorus of demands for change.

The records will show that Chancellor Kohl received a respectable two-minute standing ovation after his keynote speech. "I ask you, dear friends, to place your trust in me," he concluded, and, as if woken from a trance, 1,000Christian Democrats rose slowly to their feet.

They put their hands together to make a noise, but there was just no rythm to their clapping, no bravos, no hurrahs. Even to his followers, the prospect of a fifth term for Old King Kohl did not seem all that electrifying.

For 90 minutes, the Chancellor tried to keep them awake. He spoke like a Christian Democrat of old; about morality, social justice, and the dangers represented by the "globalisation" of unbridled capitalism. "We are not the party of the market economy," he declared. "We are the party of the social market economy."

He attacked the "left", meaning the Greens and the Social Democrats, and positioned his party in the political centre. The economy was booming, and jobs would be created galore - eventually. The opposition were to blame for the legislative gridlock preventing the implementation of urgent reforms, especially in taxation. He had said all those things before. "This is the third time I had heard this speech in the past week," confided the prime minister of one of the eastern Lander. The Chancellor had apparently tried it on party grandees before rattling it off for the Leipzig audience.

Some were not impressed. Much was expected of the Junge Wilde, the rebels who had been openly calling for new blood in recent months. Klaus Escher, the chairman of the CDU's youth wing, came closest to mounting an open attack. "We need a horizon beyond 1998," he told delegates.

Before the conference, Mr Escher had been more specific. Even if Mr Kohl were to win, he said, the Chancellor's hands should be prised off the party reins. Yesterday, Mr Escher conceded defeat and announced he was folding his tent for the duration of the election campaign. But he continued his critical barrage, especially against the government's appalling jobs record. In Britain and the Netherlands, Mr Escher told delegates, the shops had "help wanted" signs on their doors. "On German shops the sign says: `To let'." He bemoaned the "deficit of ideas" on government benches. After the elections, he said, there has to be a discussion over "how one hands over the baton".

That may be a little unkind to a man who is only 67, has won power four times, and who has every chance of winning again in elections due next September. But despite economic growth heading for 3 per cent, unemployment is still rising, and the government appears powerless to reverse the tide. The structural reforms promised by Mr Kohl 15 years ago remain just that; a promise.

Thanks to the opposition's own-goals - the Greens have just unveiled their election manifesto, which calls for the dissolution of Nato - Mr Kohl's party are favourites to win next year. Never in post-war history have Germans voted a Chancellor out of office. That task is usually reserved for the party faithful. As the Christian Democrats' love affair with Helmut Kohl turns stale, regicide becomes increasingly alluring. Such talk must, however, be suspended for the moment. The Chancellor must win first.