"Germany has always had a different definition of political conservatism than the United States or Great Britain... The movement was almost fatally compromised when Weimar conservatives aligned themselves with the Nazis before World War II... And post-War Germany has made a clear decision in favour of a strong social net. The result is a conservatism that doesn't have a knee-jerk revulsion to "big government" as do conservative Republicans and interest in neo-liberalism is relatively limited."
So writes Charles Hawley for Der Spiegel Online. But if German conservatism has always been different in form from British conservatism it is now as weak electorally. At last Sunday's elections 51.1% of German voters supported left-of-centre parties. "Only 9.8 percent voted for classic conservatism in the form of the business-friendly Free Democratic Party (FDP) and a further 35.2 percent voted for the CDU/CSU, which, while it talked a tough economic game during the campaign, is hardly comparable with, say, the Republicans in the US."
Uncertainty and confusion over tax policy and a lack of a compelling vision contributed to this election's poor performance but Mr Hawley points to deeper reasons for the decline of the CDU/CSU alliance. He mentions a rural and very traditional German party's failure to understand a cosmopolitan Germany of increasing immigration. Most of all he believes, German voters are now very committed to social justice and ecological issues. The CDU/CSU's failure to understand these commitments explains why it (and its FDP partners) garnered a full 10% fewer votes than Helmut Kohl did fifteen years ago - and did so despite the unpopularity of Gerhard Schroeder's administration.
The UK Tories have a similar problem. Today's floating voters don't just vote out of self-interest for clever dick policies. They want to vote for a party that believes in building a good society and a just world.
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