Germany’s troubled Social Democratic party on Sunday fired the starting shot in a year-long election race by ousting Kurt Beck, its hapless left-leaning chairman, and nominating the centrist Frank-Walter Steinmeier to run for chancellor in September 2009.

The SPD’s nomination of Mr Steinmeier – the foreign minister and one of Germany’s most popular politicians – had been expected. But party grandees, meeting near Potsdam, also proposed Franz Müntefering, SPD stalwart and a former minister, as new party leader.