German liberals shift from political joker to coalition wildcard

For years Germany’s liberals, the Free Democratic Party (FDP), have struggled with the image of a lightweight political joker with a line in leadership cults.

When polls close on September 26th, however, the FDP, currently polling 13 per cent, it quietly confident it will be the wild card in a marathon round of coalition poker.

A strong result would mark a remarkable turnaround for the FDP and its 42-year-old leader, Christian Lindner. Four years ago he blew up his political credibility with many voters by walking out, at the 11th hour, on coalition talks with the centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and Greens.

After enduring two years of mockery, Lindner’s liberals had a very good pandemic. The FDP was consistently vocal about the damage of lockdown measures on the economy and business, which played well with its traditional well-earning clientele of doctors, lawyers, company owners and managers.

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Simultaneously, FDP figures have come out strongly on the societal cost of rigorous pandemic restrictions, in particular on those who oppose Covid-19 vaccinations. Rediscovering its neglected tradition as Germany’s civil rights party has handed the FDP a luxurious political problem: not too few options of power, but too many.

“The FDP has a particular role now, to ensure that Germany is still governed from the centre,” said Lindner on Sunday evening, saying he was “not convinced by the CDU’s lack of programmatic focus and its political weakness”.

Strong words for a leader who, just two months ago, insisted a coalition led by the CDU was his party’s most likely path back to power – echoing its 2013-2017 alliance.

Three-way coalition

Changing voter patterns mean Germany’s first three-way federal coalition is likely. That means bringing on board the Greens for what pollsters call a “Jamaica coalition”, with the parties’ colours mirroring the island’s black-yellow-red flag.

As the CDU and its leader Armin Laschet slide in polls, however, other coalition options are now coming into play.

The rise and rise of the centre-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) and its leader Olaf Scholz has made a so-called traffic-light coalition an increasingly likely option for the FDP, again with the Greens.

In recent days, both Scholz and Lindner have both begun to fly kites, recalling their two parties’ golden days of the social-liberal politics under chancellors Willy Brandt and Helmut Schmidt.

While a new progressive coalition would find compromises on key social and even climate policies, influential leftists within the SPD and Greens are demanding tax hikes for top earners, rent caps and a looser approach to state borrowing – all non-starters for the FDP.

As leader, Lindner could go either way after election day. He is on “Du”, first-name terms with Laschet – the two men’s parties share power in North Rhine-Westphalia. Across the border last May in Rhineland-Palatinate, meanwhile, the FDP renewed its “traffic light” coalition.

Protest voters

While Lindner waits for his post-election dance card to fill, his three-point liberal programme is: “Freedom before state, earning before redistribution, innovation before prohibition.”

These three points, and its critical voice in the pandemic, have helped the FDP pull away protest voters from the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). This has helped repair the reputational damage when, last year, the FDP leader in the eastern state of Thuringia allowed himself to be elected minister president with AfD support.

That alliance collapsed within days after protest from Lindner and other federal politicians. Now polls suggest the AfD will be overtaken by the FDP on September 26th. As the largest of the Bundestag’s smaller parties, Germany’s liberals are thinking big.