A ruling coalition of two parties that can barely stand one another; a liberal party fearing annihilation at the next election; constant speculation that it could collapse at any moment … perhaps Germany is not so different from the UK after all.
Provided Angela Merkel’s coalition survives the coming winter, Germany’s next federal election will take place between late August and late October 2013. Merkel is likely to stand for re-election on the back of her durable personal popularity rating, which stands at around 66 per cent according to a poll published last month.
The real question is how the Social Democrats will resolve what the German media has dubbed their ‘K-Frage’ – Kanzlerfrage, or chancellor question. In Germany it is not necessarily the case that the leader of a party will stand as the candidate for chancellor, which is where things get interesting.
The three likely candidates – Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Sigmar Gabriel and Peer Steinbrück – have publicly agreed that the question should be settled early in the new year. In reality, however, speculation is rife, to such a degree that the deputy chair of the SPD in the Bundestag, Joachim Poß, felt the need to warn his party to keep it together in Monday’s edition of the Rheinische Post.
Poß’s warning follows internal manoeuvrings and a rumour mill powered by an impatient media. The first sign of betrayal came from Torsten Albig, president of the state of Schleswig-Holstein. Albig has publicly come out in support of Steinmeier, despite being the former spokesperson and supposedly close friend of Steinbrück, who played a key role in securing Albig’s election.
Gabriel, meanwhile, is the current leader of the SPD, and should be enjoying his party’s trust after a very strong result in May’s election in North Rhine-Westphalia, a victory largely down to a strong anti-austerity message. But both Gabriel and Steinbrück were described by the daily newspaper Die Welt recently as ‘bullies,’ and both have been dogged by controversy. Gabriel attracted strong criticism in March for describing Israel as an ‘apartheid regime,’ later scrambling to apologise should anyone have ‘misunderstood’ his comment as a reference to the former regime of South Africa.
As for Steinbrück, it was revealed in April that he had earned more additional income than any current German member of parliament. Media reports suggest that Steinbrück is likely to have earned between 500,000 and a million euros over a three-year period while also working as an MP. This is all within the rules, but unlikely to endear him to many SPD core voters.
It is perhaps, therefore, Steinmeier who will emerge as the SPD’s preferred candidate. He may appear to be a surprising choice, considering that it was he who lost to Merkel in 2009, and attracted criticism from all sides during his tenure as foreign minister – not least for refusing to meet the Dalai Lama in an apparent bid to please China. Steinmeier is, however, less polarising a candidate than Gabriel or Steinbrück. This will be an important factor for the decision-makers in the SPD, as their candidate will not only have to persuade the electorate, he will also have to hammer out a deal with another party to form a coalition government.
According to a report published by the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, the political foundation associated with the SPD, the Greens would be by far the SPD’s preferred partners, but this is by no means as assured as it once seemed. A Merkel-led Conservative-Green coalition, once dismissed by Merkel as a ‘pipe-dream,’ could be quite possible considering Merkel’s U-turn on nuclear energy following the Fukushima disaster. To seal the deal as part of a coalition government, the SPD may need Steinmeier’s guile in winning over the Greens, or even persuading Merkel’s CDU-CSU alliance into another grand coalition.
One thing is for certain: should Steinmeier succeed, Cameron will have to work hard to convince him of his diplomatic capabilities. Steinmeier has sharply criticised the British PM, suggesting that if Cameron continued in the vein of last December’s treaty opt-out it could lead to permanent alienation from the major European powers.
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Jack Tunmore is a member of Progress based in Berlin and tweets @JackTunmore
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German financial newspaper Handelsblatt had an interesting contribution today about the chancellor question – their proposition is that the Social Democrats need to decide the direction of the economics and industry policy (“Wirtschaftspolitik”) before deciding on which of the three (excellent) politicians should lead the party into the next elections.
My tip – like Jacks – is that Steinmeier will be the choice at the end of the day. He’s a former civil servant who served as an excellent foreign minister in the previous “grand coalition” between the Christian Democrats and the SDP. He gets on well with almost all of the other parties in the federal parliament and could either glue together a revised grand coalition or – a “traffic light” coalition with a rejuvenated FDP (liberals) and the greens.
I’ve got more political nous in my little finger than the Greens, nationally or internationally. The politics of the naive bordering on envirofascism( i.e. no growth). Here, they’ve cocked up Brighton, for example, and they are lacking in any political experience, so, yes, they could end up in a coalition with the Christian Democrats (what’s Christian about them?) and the loathsome FDP. My money, if I had any, no thanks to Cameron’s stupid Government, would still be on Merkel but you never know.