After 15 years of Merkel – what’s next for Germany?

Apart from American and French presidential elections, we British are largely indifferent to elections overseas. Last week Justin Trudeau’s survival in Canada barely caused a ripple in our national news media, although I dare say there would have been considerable schadenfreude had the flashy young gentleman come a cropper. 

The Canadians tell me that, “with Merkel gone,” 39-year-old Trudeau will become “the Dean”, the most senior and longest-serving member of the current club of G7 leaders. 

Merkel going is the reason why I’ll be in Berlin to cover the German Election and results, cutting a day or so off the revived annual trudge to the Labour Party conference. 

This election will truly mark the end of an era and the beginning of a new one in the richest and second most populous (hat tip Russia) in Europe. 

We don’t tend to bother much when Germany votes. Only specialists here will habitually get their heads around the names of the German party leaders. No Googling “who are the Chancellor candidates of the three leading parties” this time.

German politics are important but also boring. Change happens at a snail’s pace. In the past half-century there have been only five Chancellors; Willy Brandt, Helmut Schmidt, Helmut Kohl, Gerhard Schröder and Angela Merkel, each of whom became known globally for their statecraft. There have been twice as many British Prime Ministers and US presidents in that time, some highly forgettable. 

Duller still, Germany’s proportional representation system makes it well-nigh impossible for a single party to win a majority. Merkel has governed in coalition for all of her sixteen years in office, for twelve of them, her partners have been her main opposition. Coalitions squeeze out radicalism. Imagine what this country would be like if we were just ending a generation of joint rule by New Labour, One Nation Conservatives and Nick Clegg. 

Merkel’s legacy from the twentieth century means that Germany’s political leaders tend to behave modestly. It is not for them, Britain or France’s delusions of imperial grandeur: No strutting popinjay Monsieur Le President or pseudo-Churchillian Prime Ministers for them. They don’t even seem obsessed with being the special friend of whoever occupies the White House.

The AUKUS deal has plunged Washington, Paris and London into a three-cornered hissy fit. Meanwhile, without giving offence to anyone, Germany has continued to build trade with China.

Foreign policy was not discussed in the three television debates which have taken place during this campaign, without fuss, fanfare, histrionics or refusal to participate, naturlich.

There is no need to talk about the war and old comrades in Berlin because its inhabitants live among constant reminders of it – from the giant city blockwide holocaust memorial to the parliament building, what was the Reichstag, cunningly patched up with glass in Norman Foster’s make-over.  The scars of what was a divided city between the West and communist East will never completely heal over. For all the shiny new bank HQs and embassies built-in Pariser Platz by the Brandenburg Gate, Berlin has not become a world city again. It is a national capital by appointment, like Washington DC or Brasilia. The unspoken consensus of never again underlies the respectful way Germany’s politicians treat each other and perhaps why there is no public expectation of dramatic change after this election. 

In the run-up to the 2005 Federal election there was a flurry in Britain when Tony Blair broke diplomatic protocol during an official visit to Berlin by holding talks with Merkel, then the Chancellor candidate of the opposition CDU/CSU allied to the Conservative Party. But Chancellor Schröder, who she would soon defeat, didn’t seem to mind, although his SPD is a sister party of Labour. After the first question at a joint news conference with Blair, Schröder even abandoned his mother tongue; “look we all speak English, why don’t we just do it in that?” L’Academie would guillotine a president for such lèse-majesté.

Merkel so hated populism and populists that she decided to put off her retirement for four years and stand again in 2017 after Donald Trump became US President.

Both the main candidates to succeed her – the SDP’s Olaf Scholz and Armin Laschet of the CDU/CSU – have served in her governments. If Germany takes the bold decision to switch from a leader on the right to a leader on the left, its new Chancellor will only have moved over from being Merkel’s Vice-Chancellor and Finance Minister. 

For all that, the signs are that the hegemony that the SDP and CDU/CSU have enjoyed since the formation of the modern state in 1949 is beginning to break down. Three big shocks have shaken their shared guiding principles of promoting both German prosperity and European cooperation.  

The Green Party has grown from the environmental angst which first made Germany a non-nuclear nation. Die Linke, the Left, are neo-communists appealing to those who feel let down by German unification. Merkel’s decision in 2015 to open borders to what turned out to be over a million refugees, mainly Syrian, attached rocket boosters to the far-right Alternatif für Deutschland.

Closing opinion polls last week put the SPD around 25 per cent, CDU 21 per cent, Green 15 per cent, AfD 11 per cent, and FDP 11 per cent. The two big parties are still ahead but their support is at a historic low. If the real votes are anything like these shares (and German polls have a good record) there will be a number of consequences. First, the new Chancellor’s party will have the backing of less than a third of voters. Secondly, for the first time, a two-party Coalition will not command a majority. The SPD won’t be able to rule with just their old partners the Greens. Similarly, the free-market liberal FDP won’t clinch it for the CDU/CSU. Even another Grand Coalition would fall short, requiring a third party. 

In these circumstances, it will not be clear what the new German government will be when the result comes in. There is much talk based on the parties’ colours of possible coalitions such as “traffic light” (red, yellow, green) and Jamaica (black, yellow, green). 

The smaller parties will be courted so they will have a disproportionate amount of leverage on policies in exchange for their support. Ironically they have all had a disappointing election campaign.  

A few months ago the Greens were leading the polls with a charismatic young leader Annalena Baerbock. But she was found to have inflated her CV and plagiarised some of a thesis – peculiarly grave offences in qualifications-obsessed Germany. 

Next to drop perilously were the CDU/CSU union. They chose the safe choice placeman, Armin Laschet, as their candidate. Surveys suggest they’d be doing much better if they’d embraced the pushy Marcus Söder from their Bavarian wing. 

That means that the person most likely to succeed Merkel as Chancellor is Olaf Scholz of the SPD – seemingly because he is considered most like Merkel, much to her irritation. But his new government cannot be more of the same because of the wider coalition he will have to assemble. Whatever policies the new coalition agreed they are bound to be a fork in the road for Germany.

Scholtz is respected rather than liked. He is viewed as arrogant but also a man who gets things done. He is a “fischkopf”, or fish-head, from Northwest Germany. His reputation rests on his stint as Mayor bringing vast investment and reconstruction to Hamburg. He could yet be a role model for Andy Burnham.

Those apprehensive of change, including many cautious Germans, have a small consolation. Merkel may not be leaving quite yet. It took her six weeks to form a government in 2017. Germany’s fragmented electorate suggests it could take even longer this time. Mutti may still be in charge as a caretaker at Christmas.