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Andrea Nahles wins SPD leader contest but could be a tricky ally for embattled Angela Merkel

Andrea Nahles was elected SPD leader on Sunday - AP
Andrea Nahles was elected SPD leader on Sunday - AP

A former party rebel has been elected as the leader of Germany’s Social Democrats on Sunday, sparking fears she could rock the boat for Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor. 

Andrea Nahles, 47, a career politician, became the SPD’s first female head in its 155-year history. 

She is tasked with spearheading a rejuvenation of the SPD’s working-class support base after the party suffered embarrassing low results in last September’s election.

“We will succeed,” Ms Nahles told delegates at an SPD congress, where the vote took place, in the western city of Wiesbaden. “That is my promise.”

Her victory comes at a tricky time for Mrs Merkel, who managed to form a coalition government between her Christian Democratic Union party and the SPD after a drawn-out political process earlier this year. 

Ms Nahles beat out Simone Lange, 41, mayor of Flensburg on the Danish border, by 66 percent of the vote, significantly less than was expected.

Her sharp tongue could make her a tricky ally for Mrs Merkel and the conservatives. 

She once promised the conservative government “a smack in the mouth” and another time taunted Mrs Merkel’s CDU with a pitchy rendition of the Pippi Longstocking theme song in parliament.

Ms Nahles had spoken out against the chancellor’s reticence towards Eurozone reform on Tuesday, telling a German newspaper she had “no understanding” for the “red lines… drawn by our coalition partner.”

“That is either not thought through to the end or a challenge,” she said. “‘A New Departure for Europe’ is the title of our (coalition) agreement, no one can chicken out of it now."

If this is Mrs Merkel’s final term in office, as expected, the new SPD leader could be poised to make a bid to run Germany.

Ms Nahles wrote in her high school yearbook that one day she wanted to be “either a housewife or chancellor”.

The SPD head will also take up the added duty of parliamentary leader, an important position allowing her to respond immediately to statements by the chancellor during debates.

Ms Nahles is a career politician, first joining the centre-left party at age 18, and most notably turned heads for her fiery opposition of ex-Chancellor Gerhard Schröder’s labour reforms.

While she formerly served as labour minister under Mrs Merkel, she decided against pursuing a cabinet role this time, allegedly to make room to jostle the chancellor from the sidelines.