Obsessive loyalty to greenery is losing its appeal. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz may be its latest victim. His government has collapsed, or rather it has collapsed in the way post-war continental European governments tend to collapse – in slow motion. There will be a confidence vote in January, followed by a likely early election in March – rather than the scheduled September. Berlin does not do the Westminster model of a no confidence vote within a few days of it being tabled and then a swift dissolution if successful.
Even some in Germany are frustrated by the slow motion nature of this car crash. The opposition leader Friedrich Merz, head of the centre-Right Christian Democrats (CDU) and almost certainly Germany’s post-election Chancellor, has called for the no confidence vote to be moved forward to next week and swifter elections.
Scholz’s government is a tripartite coalition of his own Social Democrats (SPD), the Greens and the pro-business, liberal Free Democrats (FDP). Now Scholz sought to sack the FDP leader and coalition finance minister Christian Lindner last night – resulting in all FDP ministers leaving their roles and ending the coalition.
Scholz’s actions in precipitating an early election have echoes of Rishi Sunak’s decision of going to the country six months early. The SPD is polling at the historic low of 16 per cent against the just over quarter of the vote it scored at the last election and the Greens at around 10 per cent will lose about one third of their support. But the echoes are not too close – at least one of these parties is almost certain to remain in office after the election, albeit as a junior partner.
Lindner has been proposing pro-market reforms to kick start the ailing German economy and break out of its current torpor. He has also been supportive of Germany maintaining nuclear energy, or at the very least delaying its phasing out. He has also become critical of the government’s obsessive commitment to heat pumps and other fashionable net zero commitments. This freelancing is what Scholz objected to, hence the sacking.
When Scholz’s government was formed after Germany’s 2021 election, the three parties did not agree on much – the FDP is not a natural bedfellow of the Greens and the SPD. Lindner’s party has long been the most pro-market voice in German politics. When it does well, as it did in 2009 and in 2021, it captures the mood of younger voters fed up with the ossification of the German economy. It promises to rekindle the social market spirit that did so much to create West Germany’s economic success in the post-war era. Both the SPD and the Greens are champions of greater economic regulation.
Instead the coalition managed to find common ground around more peripheral issues such as cannabis legalisation and tinkering with the electoral system – in a way, needless to say, that does no harm to any of the governing parties but could imperil others.
The FDP is in the deepest trouble of the coalition threesome. It is facing an existential threat. FDP support is down to 4 or even 3 per cent – below the 5 per cent threshold required to enter the Bundestag.
This explains Lindner’s tactics and recent pro-market proposals. He is hoping that by offering an alternative – a break from the economic status quo – the FDP will attract enough support from those put off by its acquiescence in government with Left-wing policies to nudge it over 5 per cent and for it to live on to fight another day.
The story of the coming election will not be about which party comes out on top. CDU support at between 32 and 36 per cent is nearly double that of its nearest rival, the populist Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). Something extraordinary would have to happen for Merz not to be the next Chancellor. He will tack German politics slightly to the Right and talk tough on migrant crime during the election campaign – but it won’t mark a dramatic break with what has come before.
It will be about the populist challenge both from the AfD and its Left wing counterpart, the pro-Russian, anti-immigration Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht. These two parties look set to get about a quarter of the vote between them nationally – and much more in the former East.
And that is why Scholz’s strategy is not full Sunak. Neither of the populist parties are yet salonfähig. Germany’s history and how the Nazis came to power in 1933 (only with the initial coalescence of the mainstream Right) makes the political firewall against the insurgent Right extraordinarily unlikely to fracture any time soon. It took decades for France’s mainstream Right to start making overtures to the Le Pen party – these are still controversial and Germany is not France.
So the next German government will be led by the CDU – and include some combination of SPD, Greens and, if they survive, FDP. It will represent a modest nudge to the Right and slightly more pro-market policies. But there will certainly not be a rapture with the pro-EU consensus.
Which will of course further fuel the rise of the populists and the shrinking of the old parties. The game has some time yet to play.