Category Archives: Germany

CDU: Screwing up on purpose?

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Ok, now that Edward has already mentioned it, I might as well explain in a little more detail what I meant by saying that “on some level, the CDU might be afraid to win.”

Last Saturday evening, strolling through Stockholm’s Gamla Stan, Edward asked me about my gut feeling concerning the outcome of the German election next week. I told him that, while it was rather entertaining, this campaign has also been confusing – and confused – in many ways, particularly when looking at the CDU. And I believe the confused and confusing campaign the CDU is conducting is even more an expression of the way the German establishment is puzzled about the way ahead than the fact that Schröder “called” the elections a year too early, too early for any of his reforms to have any perceptible impact on the economy, not even in the West.
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Once In Another Lifetime

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Former UK prime minister Harold Wilson coined the phrase ‘a week is a long time in politics’. Well I don’t know about a week, but two months certainly is. Back on July 12 Doug Merrill was wryly posting about “Things You Can Do When You’re 20 Points Up in the Polls“. Maybe he’d now like to do another one about things you can’t do when you’ve just lost your overall majority. I think Merkel’s face tells it all, we’re now back with Fassbinder and deeply ensconced in ‘fear eats the soul’ territory. Whatever the outcome on Sunday, this will surely have to go down as one of the worst run political campaigns in recent history. As Tobias was suggesting to me at the weekend, maybe somewhere deep down inside they just don’t want to win.

Department of Wow

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Aside from revealing the extent to which internecine warfare seems to have broken out in the CDU camp, I was pretty much stopped in my tracks by this statement in Heinrich von Pierer’s interview with the FT:

“The important problems, such as the ageing of the population or what kind of immigration policy we need, are not being discussed at all”

Note: Heinrich von Pierer is Angela Merkel’s chief economic adviser and was formerly chief executive at Siemens.

German Election: Pollwatch

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Today’s Handelsblatt reports that a poll carried out for N24 TV shows the CDU stabilising in the polls after last week’s Schröder Surge. The CDU was on 42%, up 1.5%, with the FDP on 6%, down 0.5%, putting the Festival of Sternness Coalition on 48.5%. The SPD sank back one percentage point to 33.5%, with the Greens unchanged on 7% and the Left on 8%, also unchanged – putting the two camps exactly level and the Ampelkoalition on 46.5%. (Regarding the “traffic light option”, it’s worth remembering that the Left and the CDU-CSU are not exactly the material of a stable opposition, and a minority government could theoretically survive by playing them off against each other.)

Interestingly, an opportunity to test the validity of electoral spread betting has come up – the betting market Wahlstreet (ouch) has the SPD on 34% and the CDU just under 40%, with Greens on 8.5%, Left on 7.5% and FDP on 7.5%. This would put the Red-Red-Green buggered imagination option in the box seat with exactly 50%, the CDU/FDP on 47.5%…and the Ampelkoalition over the finishing line with an impressive 50%. (Amusingly, given that the margin of error for the polls is 2.5%, Wahlstreet quotes to the nearest two decimal places.) Over time, it seems that votes are drifting very gradually from the smaller to the bigger parties.

You might think this is of limited interest, seeing as Guido “He’s Not Dull – He’s a Statesman” Westerwelle told the nation in last night’s TV debate that the FDP would be in opposition if the CDU/FDP ticket didn’t make it (Link to the Austrian newspaper whose website uses frames). But, not so fast!
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Flattened By The Flat Tax?

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Following Alex, more opinion polls seem to be showing that Merkel will struggle to get a majority in partnerhip with the FDP. At the same time voices are being raised within the CDU suggesting that the principal responsibility for this debacle lies with the Professor from Heidelberg.

Some indication of why flat tax ideas might impact so negatively on German voters is offered by the Financial Times this morning in a leader commenting on similar proposals from within the UK Conservative Party:
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The Imagination Attempts to..Relax

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Another set of polls, this time taken for ARD TV and reported here, seem to bear out the surprising recovery of Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and the imagination-buggering prospect of a Red-Red-Green coalition. The CDU was down 2% at 41% and the SPD up 2% at 34%, with the Greens solid at 7%, the Linkspartei down 0.5% at 8.5%, and (curiously) the Homeopathic Parachute Club FDP up 0.5% at 6.5%.

Surely the 0.5% can’t be the same people? Anyway, that would put the Coalition of the Desperate at 49.5% against 47.5% for the Festival of Stern..if, of course, the imagination can be persuaded to “take it”. In these increasingly odd political waters, the first signs of people positioning themselves for post-election coalition talks are now visible. Coalition negotiations are the hard-core porn of politics, and this looks like it’s going to be absolutely filthy, especially if the death of the NPD candidate in Dresden prolongs things.

Schröder has publicly refused to talk coalitions, saying it would be wrong (ha! he wants it really!), and that his aim is to make the SPD the largest party and continue the coalition with the Greens. Angela Merkel has called him out and accused him of, ah, flirting with the Linkspartei, whilst Joschka Fischer has claimed that he will never, no, nay, never no more deal with Oskar Lafontaine. Nuh. Lafontaine further claims he has “not the slightest fear” of a grand coalition, although it would be worse than a rightwing government..and he is also busy rowing back on his remarks about foreign workers.

And for their sad little part, the neo-Nazis have selected their replacement candidate for Dresden. In an astonishingly original move, it’s Franz Schönhuber, the ancient founder, leader, general secretary and dogcatcher of the outlawed Republican Party, an octogenarian fascist who I thought was dead. Yawn!

Swings Back For Schr�der/Fischer

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It seems that in the aftermath of the debate, Gerhard Schröder’s possible coalition partners have unexpectedly regained some inner poise as the German election campaign goes pirouetting into its last ten days of not-quite-frenzied democracy. The CDU and FDP both lost one point in polls taken for Stern and RTL, with the SPD three points up, the Left one point down and the Greens unchanged. Even though the SPD is still six points down on the CDU, this may be a key moment – as the potential rightwing coalition is now no longer a majority.

It was a good day for the Chancellor, as he put on 4 percentage points of personal approval – which takes him to 17 points up on Angela Merkel, at 48 to 31. This may perhaps explain why, as Jörg Lau blogs here, Germany is being covered in SPD posters featuring little else than big pictures of yer man. As a further reminder never to write off lumbering and traditionalistic German institutions, the FAZ reports today that German industry beat everybody’s production forecasts for July. For the two-month period June-July, output in manufacturing, construction and energy was up as much as 2% over the preceding two months.

Mind you, though, the Schröder recovery story does contain one socking great if – the suggestion that, if the election was today, he could form a government relies entirely on forming a coalition between the SPD, Greens and the Linkspartei. The idea of a Schröder-Lafontaine reconciliation buggers the imagination, gentle reader – although desperation is always a great motivator. And, were the LP to go back into government, you can assume that much of the Schröder agenda would go out of the window.

The Nuclear Option

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Don’t blame me, blame Alex for this, since he’s the one who started me thinking about all those other issues associated with the German elections – apart that is from the economic ones. Like this in today’s FT:

“It must have seemed like a good idea at the time. ….Last week, she (Angela Merkel) named Heinrich von Pierer, a former Siemens chief executive, her chief economic advisor. The fresh faces, it was thought, would add energy and credibility to her bid for the top job….(but)…Mr von Pierer sparked his own media firestorm when he called for an extension of the life of nuclear power stations by 60 years.”

I may be slow, but the implications of this didn’t really sink-in till I read in the EU observer that:

“Brussels predicts that oil prices will stay high in the foreseeable future and that the EU will need to build more nuclear reactors..”I expect investments in the nuclear sector in Europe, and in the rest of the world, will grow”, the commissioner (Andris Piebalgs) said.

Well, no wonder the greens are fuming.

…And The German Election Posts Just Keep Coming

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Naturally enough, following the US model, the really important thing in the (quasi-)presidential debate isn’t what happens during the debate, but the post-debate exploitation of whatever happens then. So no surprise to find that the SPD and the Greens are jumping all over a claim that Angela Merkel, as well as quoting Reagan, was being a little economical with the truth regarding her own past position on childcare and abortion.

The story is thin, but the meat seems to be that Merkel allegedly claimed that as Minister for Women she introduced a right to childcare from the age of three onwards – in fact she abstained when the legislation went through the Bundestag, because the provision was included in the same bill that established a unified law on abortion for united Germany. It’s not much, but you’ve got to try…

(In the light of the post below, isn’t it strange that squeezing completely unconnected provisions into bills is itself a rather Capitol Hill practice?)

Germany’s American Campaign

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Well, it seems my guest stint is going to be along the lines of “All German Election, All The Time”, but some more things have come up! In last night’s TV debate between Schröder and Merkel, it seems, the CDU leader used some words that weren’t entirely her own. According to Der Standard (or should that be “the Austrian newspaper whose website could be better organised”?), her peroration was very similar to another peroration delivered in the same sort of circumstances. Not Bismarck this time…but Ronald Reagan, in his debate with Jimmy Carter on the 28th of October 1980. (You can compare the texts at the link above.) Now, that is of minor interest in itself, but it does point up a curious feature of modern German politics.

It’s all so American.

As I pointed out in my last AFOE contribution, Germany has a curious combination of a parliamentary constitution and a presidential political culture, which gives rise to the notion of a Spitzenkandidat separate from the party leader. Not only that, but yesterday saw all national TV networks cleared for a one-to-one debate between the top two candidates…something that doesn’t happen even in supposedly presidential Britain. Slogans have something oddly transatlantic about them, too – Edmund Stoiber ran last time under the line “Kantig. Echt. Erfolgreich.”, which reminded me at least far more of “A Reformer With Results” than anything European.

It’s always said that TV is crucial in Britain, but there is so little political coverage that I’ve always doubted its importance relative to the press, which covers elections exhaustively and addresses a readership more likely than the average to vote. But German elections seem far more televisual…

Just as in last year’s US presidential election, the whole debate was accompanied by a spin storm whipped up by both sides’ pet bloggers (the CDU cunningly grabbed the domain name wahlfakten.de for theirs whilst the SPD had to content themselves with roteblogs). However, wahlblog05.de seems to be channelling the spirit of our dear departed generalelection05, scrupulously balanced and perhaps even a tad too serious.

WB05 informs us that another US political tradition has even taken hold, too – destroying your opponents’ campaign materials. What on earth is going on?