Germany’s Social Democrats are one of the great progressive and civilising forces in our continent, having stood fast against fascism and communism and ensured peace and prosperity in postwar Europe with governments led by chancellors of the calibre of Willy Brandt and Helmut Schmidt. But their decline since 2009 was one of the first signs the Great Recession would represent a great reverse for Europe’s centre-left. Angela Merkel has come to dominate not only German politics, but European politics too. Against that, she faces the increasingly vocal public criticism of Horst Seehofer, leader of the Christian Social Union in her centre-right bloc, a surge in support for anti-immigrant populists, and internal disquiet about the wisdom of her approach to the refugee crisis.

For six years of the Merkel decade, she has governed in uneasy grand coalitions with the SPD. In 2005, having blown a hefty pre-campaign lead to win by just over one per cent, she made an uncertain start, but on the back of strong leadership in the first phase of the eurozone debt crisis, was able to ditch the SPD to form a centre-right coalition with the Free Democrats after the 2009 federal elections. While Merkel’s popularity increased, the FDP suffered the same fate as their British Liberal counterparts, and ended up out of the Bundestag altogether in 2013. With Merkel’s CDU/CSU still a few seats short of an absolute majority despite a crushing victory, the pragmatic desire for stable government meant a second grand coalition with the SPD.

Experienced SPD figures led by party chair Sigmar Gabriel, foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Labour minister Andrea Nahles, have made a significant policy impact in government, introducing Germany’s first federal minimum wage, and additional investment in childcare and education. Gabriel, the likely SPD chancellor candidate for the 2017 federal elections, has offered strong and distinctive leadership within the coalition, achieving important concessions on policy on newly-arrived refugees. But what are his prospects for 2017?

Like the centre-left elsewhere, the SPD suffers from an identity crisis about what social democracy is for. In its two victories under Gerhard Schröder’s leadership in 1998 and 2002, the SPD achieved 40.5 per cent and 38.5 per cent of the vote respectively. In the three federal elections since that has crumbled to 34.2 per cent (2005), 23 per cent (2009) and 25.7 per cent (2013). Recent polls show the first significant dent in support for Merkel, with the CDU/CSU falling to 36 per cent. But the beneficiaries have been the Eurosceptic and anti-immigrant AfD, with SPD ratings flatlining since entering the grand coalition two years ago. While the decision last year to go into coalition with the Greens in a De Linke-led government in Thuringia has not harmed the SPD electorally, it still faces structural problems in eastern Germany, which Schröder carried convincingly. As with the rest of Europe, there is no shortcut for the mainstream centre-left from the tough task of renewing social democracy in more positive messaging and policies, building a broader electoral base, and seeing off populism from left and right.

Despite her recent difficulties and three big state electoral tests next spring, Merkel faces no realistic internal rival within her bloc to seeking a fourth term as chancellor, a big lead over any of the potential SPD challengers, and the centre-left locked into government defending a record as junior coalition partners. The next federal election may lock Germany into an Austrian-style near-permanent grand coalition politics in which populists and extremists exploit the opposition vacuum, or, more positively, repeat the events of 1969, where the SPD successfully displaced the CDU/CSU from the federal government with a new centre-left coalition. 2017 will be a critical election year for Europe – if the centre-left loses again in France and Germany, European social democracy faces a huge task for recovery and relevance.

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William Bain is a former member of parliament and supporter of Labour Friends of Germany