THE ELECTION victory in such difficult economic times of Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU), even on a marginally reduced vote, is testimony to the extraordinary resilience and popularity of one of Europe’s political heavyweights. The party now represents a third of German voters and, with the country’s equivalent to the PDs, the tax-cutting, socially liberal Free Democrats (FDP) – the real winners of the election – Dr Merkel will now be able comfortably to form a new coalition government of the centre-right to replace the outgoing “grand coalition” with the Social Democrats (SPD).
Dr Merkel epitomises the CDUs’ more populist, neo-social democratic wing, even perhaps – as some commentators have observed – to the left of her Social Democratic predecessor, Gerhard Schröder. “We’re on the side of workers . . . We’re the only party that truly represents the middle of our society,” she insisted on Saturday. And, although the campaign by the party and its Christian Social Union sister-party in Bavaria mirrored the FDP on a tax-cutting agenda, that might not prove so easy to implement in the face of a budget deficit expected next year to hit €100 billion and her own electoral promises to protect the country’s social safety net. Yesterday she recommitted herself to tax cuts, but significantly refused to say when. Nonetheless, markets welcomed the result.
The FDP, under the charismatic Guido Westerwelle, scored its best result ever (14 per cent), returning to power after 11 years in the political wilderness. It is the most free-market orientated of Germany’s parties and its vote of confidence reflects perceptions of economic competence in its past roles – a safe pair of hands to help ride out the recession.
The party leader is likely to be appointed vicechancellor and foreign minister, following in the footsteps of Hans-Dietrich Genscher and other Kohl-era FDP foreign ministers. And, although continuity is likely to be the hallmark of the new government’s foreign policy, it will be less inclined to pull German troops out of Afghanistan, and again less than enthusiastic about Turkish accession to the EU. Mr Westerwelle has spoken also in the past of a “normalisation” of Berlin’s approach to the EU, suggesting a greater willingness to assert German interests, code for a shaking-off of the onerous moral burden of German history.
For the Social Democrats (SPD), once Europe’s predominant party of the centre left, the 23 per cent rout is an unmitigated disaster. Scoring its worst result since the fall of the Weimar Republic in 1933, the party found itself squeezed from left and right with the hard-left Die Linke and the Greens registering their strongest results yet. A combined left-green vote of 45 per cent might appear to have potential as an alternative government, but, in truth, the weakness of the SPD, many of whom regard associating with Die Linke as unacceptable, makes that impossible. The party faces a divisive bout of soul-searching that will probably involve finding yet another new leader.