BERLIN: Germany’s conservative opposition, leading in the polls ahead of Feb 23 elections, on Tuesday outlined plans to shift the EU powerhouse firmly to the right on immigration, social and economic policy. Friedrich Merz, head of the Christian Democrats (CDU), is tipped to replace Social Democrat Chancellor Olaf Scholz, whose term the conservatives have slammed as “three lost years” for the stuttering economy. A day after Scholz lost a confidence vote he had called to pave the way for the early elections, Merz charged that the chancellor had “lost the confidence of a majority of the population a long time ago”. Merz — long a party rival of the CDU’s more moderate ex-chancellor Angela Merkel — has steered a return to the party’s right-wing roots to try to win support of voters tempted by the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party. In their campaign programme published on Tuesday, the CDU and its Bavarian allies the CSU vowed to “stop illegal migration” and scale down benefits for rejected asylum seekers to a “bed, bread and soap” minimum. They also pledged “zero tolerance” on crime, more video surveillance in public spaces and to “shut down mosques where hate and anti-Semitism is being preached”. Much of the platform may be softened in the coalition talks that typically follow German elections, but for now the alliance vowed to reverse two decades of more centrist rule dating back to the Merkel years. They promised a “fundamental shift in migration policy” and criticised Merkel’s welcome to refugees, without naming her, by declaring that “we also made mistakes in government — and learnt from them”. The alliance also said it would reverse the legalisation of marijuana enacted by Scholz’s three-party alliance with the Greens and the liberal FDP, which collapsed in early November. The CDU also said it opposed efforts to liberalise abortion rules, a new gender self-determination law, and a modern linguistic convention often dubbed “gendering” designed to make the German language more inclusive. Speaking at a joint press conference with Merz, CSU leader Markus Soeder summed up their position as firmly middle-class and conservative and “definitely not left-wing and not woke and not gendered”. In contrast, the campaign of the Social Democrats (SPD), the traditional defenders of the working class, emphasises better wages, stable pensions and benefits such as free school lunches. Also presenting its manifesto on Tuesday, the SPD vowed “respect” for workers and to “fight for every job”. It wants to lower taxes for 95pc of earners and raise them for the super-rich, while also increasing the minimum wage from 12 to 15 euros per hour. The party promised to bring down soaring food prices by cutting value-added tax and making sure families “have more money in their pocket at the end of the month”. The SPD stressed that, while it wants to control illegal immigration, ageing Germany is “a country of immigration” that needs foreign labour and values “diversity and tolerance”.