I'm in a Starbucks looking up at Cologne Cathedral. About to head to the airport and return home to London.
I've just finished reading the cover feature in this week's Newsweek:
"LOST LEADER: Once hailed as Germany's Margaret Thatcher, Angela Merkel is now ruling by poll, lying low, stalling on reform. What happened?"
The article is a great read and its arguments have been confirmed by all of the people I've been meeting this weekend, as guests of the Friedrich Naumann Stiftung - one of the taxpayer-larded study groups that are loosely attached to each of Germany's main political parties.
The article begins by noting that 45% of west Germans and 57% of east Germans think that socialism is a good thing. Two-thirds support extended unemployment benefits and a lower retirement age. This rise in underlying popular support for big state measures is also reflected in support for Germany's left-of-centre parties. The SPD is on 25%. The Greens on 10%. The far-left 'Die Linke' (Left) party led by Oskar Lafontaine (the man once described by The Sun as the most dangerous man in Europe) on 11%. A total support for clearly left-wing parties of 46%.
Worse, according to Newsweek and the (classical) liberals I've been with this weekend, is that Angela Merkel's CDU-CSU is drifting that way, too. What isn't clear is whether Chancellor Merkel believes in more state intervention or whether it's a necessary price for her grand coalition with the SPD. Huge sections of her party are certainly badly burnt by the huge loss in support that the party suffered during the last federal elections campaign. Merkel promised significant market reforms but saw a huge CDU-CSU opinion poll advantage almost completely eliminated by polling day.
The CDU-CSU now appear very cautious. They appear too willing to agree to their junior SPD partner's wishes for retreat on some of the reforms introduced by Gerhard Schroder. Privatisation has stopped. Plans to deregulate public health insurance have been abandoned. Higher minimum wages and more generous welfare settlements all threaten to undo some of the good achieved by previous labour market measures. The opportunity for retreat has come from a strong uptick in German economic performance. Unemployment numbers have fallen by a million in one year. The economy has grown by over 3% overall over the last 12 months. Complacency has crept back on to the public agenda.
None of this leftwards drift is hurting Mrs Merkel in the polls. She enjoys sky high approval ratings. Germans still love consensus politics and only a crisis appears to bring about an appetite for change. The risk, Newsweek concludes, is that "the next economic downturn will show how skin-deep the country's first dose of reforms has been".
Britain, of course, faces the same dangers. The British state is now larger than Germany's again. I get the sense we spend less wisely than the infrastructure-conscious Germans. Thatcherism is being undone and the Tories don't appear brave enough to stop the growth of government. Germany is certainly drifting leftwards but is Britain any better?
Related link: The era of big government conservatism?
Merkel is clearly not another Maggie (and neither is George).
Posted by: Umbrella man | October 28, 2007 at 15:38
Also in that edition of 'Newsweek', an excellent essay about the ridiculous nature of the American neo-con arguments towards Iran.
Nice picture by the way. I'm sure I remember that view from the time I used to be able to grab the odd freebie to various EU 'seminars'!
Posted by: Giles Marshall | October 28, 2007 at 15:52
Which still leaves the economic liberals here to explain how their manufacturing balance of payments is £80bil to the good whilst ours is £60bil to the bad???
Posted by: Opinicus | October 28, 2007 at 16:46
Germany actually produced a clear left of centre majority at the last election (SPD+Greens+Die Linke) on both party and constituency lists (I'm not sure how their system works, looks like some kind of hybrid PR system).
The CDU/CSU actually marginally lost vote share in 2005 and the SPDs vote share went down by less than Die Linke went up so if anything there was a slight swing to the left at the last election........
Germany hasn't 'shifted leftwards' because it never shifted rightwards!!
Posted by: Comstock | October 28, 2007 at 17:09
To some extent the arithmetic of the German legislature prevents Merkel from carrying out what she wants to do - the last election was very close.
That's possibly a measure of their ludicrous electoral system and why I strongly support first-past-the-post.
Posted by: Votedave | October 28, 2007 at 17:12
Angela Merkel is a politician blown by the opinion polls. Nicolas Sarkozy by contrast is a much more serious minded politician. In fact Sarkozy has tried to advise Merkel that the Euro is becoming overvalued and Merkel showed very poor form in slapping down new boy Sarkozy before the world's media.
Posted by: Tony Makara | October 28, 2007 at 17:37
Sadly Germany is shifting leftwards. The Germans have only themselves to blame. If they had any sense the FDP would be the sole party of government.
Good news in Switzerland though. The sensible SVP gained 29% of the vote recently and now controls 2 of the 7 seats on the Fed Council I think. Well done to them!
Posted by: Radical Tory | October 28, 2007 at 18:53
The Tory Party should support Germany's Free Democrat Party (classical liberal/libertarian) rather than the europhile and 'wet' CDU-CSU.
Posted by: Shaun | October 28, 2007 at 21:36
What are you doing in a Starbucks in Cologne Tim? You should be in something more German. When in Rome...
Posted by: Jennifer Wells | October 28, 2007 at 21:37
I needed internet access Jennifer. I did eat two Bratwurst and also broke my no-alcohol until Thanksgiving pledge by enjoying a few Pilseners with my hosts!
Posted by: Editor | October 28, 2007 at 21:40
Unemployment down by a million? the German economy booming? Merkel enjoying sky-high approval ratings? Worst of all, a failure to adhere to some undigested American dogmas that have never had a place in post-war European Christian Democracy? Quelle horreur!
All seems to be going rather well for Frau Merkel. She's a big enough lady to ignore the sniping of those who don't understand German politics one bit.
Rather apt you've retreated to that brash symbol of American ubiquity, Starbucks, to type, eh Tim?
Posted by: Margaret on the Guillotine | October 28, 2007 at 21:49
It's a mistake to judge 'continental' politics by Anglo-Saxon standards. This is a fatal mistake the British have been making for many years.
Bismarck described his social security measures as 'State Socialism', and as the perceptive historian Mark Mazower has demonstrated, many of the less outrageous roots of National Socialism lay in a left-right consensus stretching back decades before the rise of Hitler.
The founders of today's CDU - many of whom were members of the pre-1933 Centre Party - were very much at the heart of that consensus. The Centre Party was wedded to a social Catholicism which is utterly unknown to most British observers. Merkel, regardless of her religion, is heir to that tradition.
This is not something to be 'condemned' in the Germans. It's just the way other people order their affairs. It is we Brits who are naive for ever assuming that things were other than they in fact are.
Posted by: Traditional Tory | October 28, 2007 at 22:52