The chancellor’s popular rival has said he is unavailable to stand, leaving Scholz as the default candidate

The German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, will be nominated as the candidate to lead his Social Democratic party (SPD) into the February general election after his more popular defence minister, Boris Pistorius, pulled out of the race.

After weeks of calls for a change at the top of the ticket, Pistorius released a video on Thursday in which he stated that he was “not available” to stand as the SPD flag-bearer in the snap election triggered after Scholz sacked his finance minister, Christian Lindner, imploding the three-year-old ruling coalition.