Angela Merkel won her fourth term but the results were not pretty either for Merkel’s CDU/CSU party or SPD, her Grand Coalition partner following the last election.
Support for major parties nose-dived and the Eurosceptic AfD party is now the third largest party in Germany.
Rather than enter another Grand Coalition, SPD has indicated it will go into opposition.
The above chart from the Financial Times.
With SPD bowing out, Merkel has two unfortunate choices: Enter a three-way coalition or form a minority government. The latter would take pot shots from all sides.
I discussed this setup on September 19, in AfD In 3rd Place in German Election Polls: Unhappy Political Marriages.
If SDP chooses opposition, Merkel could form a majority government via an alliance of CDU (36), the Greens (7), and FDP (9). Currently, that alliance would have a bare majority with 52% of the vote.
Regardless of what happens, Merkel will be in a much-weakened position compared to now.
And other than a miracle CDU/FDP finish that achieves more than 50%, it may take quite some time after the election for the next government to form.
In response to that article, a European reader told me to stop writing about European politics because I don’t know what I am talking about.
Stark Choice
The Guardian reports Angela Merkel Faces Stark Choice Between Coalition or Minority Rule.
Having gained the largest percentage of the vote despite her party suffering its worst result since 1949, Merkel’s CDU will still need to find one or more coalition partners in order to find a governing majority, or pursue a minority government.
A continuation of the current “grand coalition” between the centre-right and the centre-left would have guaranteed 53% of the vote, according to exit poll projections, but was ruled out by the SPD’s lead candidate, Martin Schulz, as he conceded defeat.
With the CDU nursing its wounds after the worst result in its postwar history, many members believe that the party can only recuperate its former energy in opposition.
If the CDU [I believe they mean SPD] stayed outside the cabinet it would also stop AfD from assuming the role of leader of the opposition and gaining associated parliamentary privileges.
The only other option for a majority government would be a so-called “Jamaica coalition” between the CDU, the pro-business FDP and the Green party, named after the colours traditionally associated with the groups.
Politicians from both the FDP and the Greens have publicly dismissed the Jamaica option, and a coalition would be seen with scepticism by the Green party’s members, who lean further to the left than its leadership. “How high do you have to be?”, the newspaper Taz noted wryly in its Friday edition, emblazoned with a picture of [Jamaican singer] Bob Marley smoking a joint.
Should talks about a grand coalition or a Jamaica solution break down, Merkel could consider a minority government supported by all her three potential coalition partners.
Speaking on TV on Sunday evening, however, Merkel appealed to rule out a minority government, saying it was her intention to “achieve a stable government in Germany”.
So here we are. Coalition talks will take quite a bit of time, or Merkel will have to form a minority government.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
I for one encourage you to keep on talking about European politics because you are one of the few somewhat unbiased sources left. As a European, the only news I get is pro EU, pro Hillary, anti Trump and anti Russia. You may not always be right but you do provide the desperately needed opposite view to our mainstream BS.
Thanks Dennis
Much appreciated
Mish
In the Netherlands they’ve been talking about a coalition since March 15; once in place, no policy debate will ever be possible for fear of blowing up whatever delicate coalition (with secret agreements) has been reached. Germany might also face a weak and delicate cabinet, facing stiff popular support, and long negotiations. Populist parties upset all the possible old-style balances, and hasten new elections with even more people opting out of the mainstream parties, as happened in France.
Totally agree Dennis.
Yes
Dennis, what are the odds that Merkel committed election fraud?
zero
You’re not Dennis.
Very true. There used to be some European news sites that allowed comments; the comment section was where the real news was. However, they all pulled the plug as the discussion got non-PC.
That information is not correct. You can comment on major European news sites such as telegraph, les echos, spiegel, 20min, and faz…. just to name a few.
Seehofer ( CSU – Bavaria ) messed up big time. His antics cost Union about 2% . Seehofer’s foolishness gave AfD their boost.
SPD going into opposition to prevent AfD from being official opposition
Jamaica coalition is nearly a sure thing .
FDP victory is a good thing for free market
The legitimate parties are going to remove chair in the parliament such that the AfD sits next to no one. i
The more the establishment parties shun AfD the more attractive they become.
“SPD going into opposition to prevent AfD from being official opposition”
Is that not an unofficial ‘coalition’ with Merkel? “Opposition” in name only, specifically to marginalize AfD?
I’ve got to agree with your logic. To extend your logic, CDU forms a “minority” government in name only.
The only way CDU & SPD can hope to stop AfD is if the establishment parties stop behaving so anti-Germany, and whatever her merits might have been Merkel will have to be thrown on her sword.
Every time Merkel mumbles how much she hates Germany, AfD gains. Every time there is a rape or mugging, and the polizei complain that Merkel’s government is preventing a prosecution — AfD gains.
Telling the population that they are deplorable and everything is their fault is a stupid way to win an election… in any country. Merkel ist dummkopf.
more akin to the legitimate parties coordinating against the wackos
We shouldn’t imagine the AfD to be a US style conservative party like maybe Rush or Hannity would support. They are not like that at all. The AfD leadership is a group of plain wack jobs. They support big government and big socialist programs.
And yet Merkel continues to work tirelessly to get AfD elected
By any reasonable sanity standards, they’re all wackos. Pickling favorites amongst them, is down there with attempting to rank order turds in a sewer.
The move by the SPD may not be that bad.
1. It prevents AFD to be the biggest opposition (according to seats)
2. They went to bed with Mutti and got crashed in the past as she plays her role well
“SPD going into opposition to prevent AfD from being official opposition.”
Maybe, maybe not. I watched the round table of the major party leaders on ZDF last night, and all the leaders demonstrated no lack of disdain for Schultz (SPD), who was a bit unhinged in my opinion. Schultz was always a disagreeable figure when in the European Parliament, and I heard more than a few Germans who were long-time supporters of SPD say they couldn’t vote for Schultz, and a couple admitted voting CDU. So you have the real possibility that Schultz is leadin the opposition in earnest.
You also have the possibility that voters flowed like water from SPD to CDU and FDP, meaning that CDU’s numbers were actually worse but for the votes it picked up from the SPD. My first take on FDP was that it was resuscitated by the presence of AfD, but a further dig into the campaigns suggests that this time around they actually had a platform with substance that resonated with people fleeing the big-two. This would also suggest that in addition to weathering a withering barrage of fire from the media and losing votes to FDP that might otherwise have gone to them, AfD actually did even better than the current analysis suggests.
One thing for sure….Merkel will accelerate the immigration…how else will her party ever win an election ?
AfD is in 3rd place overall, 2nd place in the former eastern Germany (Merkel’s base).
CSU/CDU can’t form a government alone. Whatever “grand coalition” permutation one thinks of, Merkel’s party is weak and must compromise heavily.
Germany (and ultimately the deadbeat EU that lives off Germany) now has two scenarios between now and the next election.
1) The CSU/CDU waits a few months to save face, and then replaces Merkel with someone less anti-Germany
2) AfD continues to make inroads and eventually gets into a position of power — making Germany VERY anti-EU.
Italy has 3/4 parties expressing anti-Euro and anti-EU policies. France is essentially a failed state, with their pretty boy “president” struggling just to be a seat warmer / keep Le Pen at bay. Illegal immigrants and terrorism dominates life in Paris and Mediterranean cities.
I don’t understand why the Catalonians want to replace one hopeless, uncaring, unaccountable bureaucracy (Madrid) with another (Brussels). But clearly Spain is not as happy with the status quo as pro-EU cheerleaders want us to think.
England already left the EU.
the United Kingdom (Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland AND England) has not yet left the EU and is still paying in about a billion a month to be a member.
the two year exit date is March 2019 (less than 18 months).
Maybe you missed the brexit vote, but the rest of us were paying attention.
England may or may not actually pay the tribute to Brussels you fantasize about — depends how the severance talks go. There is a good chance Juncker’s wacko position will cost Brussels all payments.
No one cares if a bunch of unelected bureaucrats have officially accepted England’s departure. Its a done deal
i voted. britain voted to leave. britain gave notice to leave in March 2017. There is a two year notie period. Britain remains part of the EU until then, March 2019.
The severance bill is entreily separate to the ongoing monthly payments. Those monthly payments are due cease in March 2019.
I beleive there should eb a tungsten exit, today and Britain should send the EU a bill for the half a trillion euros that Britain has paid.
You need to pay more attention to what people post and not answer your own position without reading others.
You believe, you believe blah blah blah.
England may or may not end up paying those monthly tributes to the pirates in Brussels — unless a formal exit agreement is signed, one cannot say any of it is being paid.
You meant to write that some politicians **PROMISED** to pay 1 billion per month. You somehow forgot to mention that Brussels promised not to run or tolerate deficits over 3% or allow debt over 40% of GDP… politician promises are only kept when / if they feel like it.
Maybe England will pay. Maybe they won’t. We already know with 100% certainty that Brussels HAS ALREADY defaulted on its so-called promises.
You keep writing about what London and Brussels are supposed to do, or promised to do — neither of them take their own promises as seriously.
I will keep focusing on what they actually do, because I know politicians tend to break promises whenever it is convenient to do so.
Pull all the lawyer technicalities you like — the law doesn’t apply to politicians, which is why Brexit happened (and also why Trump defeated the crook)
–> “In response to that article, a European reader told me to stop writing about Europen politics because I don’t know what I am talking about.”
The parallels between the Weimar Republic and Angela Merkel’s government are just too glaring to ignore. Both cow-towed to Paris. Both confiscated German savings. Both ran massive spending deficits, with way too much welfare. Both blamed Germany for everything.
Wiemar Republic didn’t create Hitler, but definitely created the environment where someone like Hitler would thrive. Merkel didn’t create AfD, but she created and keeps nurturing a political / economic climate where AfD will prevail.
If Merkel is re-elected chancellor by whatever coalition forms in Germany over the next few months, assume the AfD will be the primary beneficiary.
PS — while polizei and media outlets have been ordered to downplay immigrant crime, when a German father hears his daughter was raped or a local shopkeeper robbed, who are they going to believe? When German churches are empty, and Merkel’s government clears land for a new mosque, who is naive enough to think native Germans won’t notice?
Whatever happens, I do admire the basic multi-party government structures in Europe compared to our rigid two party system in the USA. Besides better supporting specific voter needs, probably more difficult for corporations and special interest groups to subvert the electoral process since they must spread their money and interests across so many different party representatives. Not a sure thing like here in the States.
Big business does it via the EU.
They go straight to where pan-European regulatory power sits and pull-strings from there.
There has traditionally been less real animosity between big business and labor in Europe than in most of the rest of the world; fanciful symbolic gestures notwithstanding. Labor in Europe has been more organized, as is labor negotiations. So while there’s always some room for squabbles at the margin, both are much aware that what is good for industry, is also good for those working in industry. It honestly works the same way here, in the only fully unionized sector left: Public workers. Those guys are also very much aware that what’s good for the Government, is good for them…..
A system like that can keep a lid on underlying oppositions as long as it’s either growing enough to have room to accept all comers, or it can effectively draw a wall behind those on the inside, and those on the outside. And, as long as there are few benefits for those on the inside, from doing side deals with outsiders. All those facets of post war Europe is being weakened now.
The mass of immigrants have grown large enough that they are no longer content doing the low paid, dirty jobs that unionized Germans wouldn’t want to do anyway. And more and more “immigrants” are second and third generation ones, less “grateful” for simply being given any sort of opportunity than their first generation parents/grand parents were. They now want to be treated as equals.
Then there’s low cost competition from abroad, making it harder and harder for German industry to stay competitive without sourcing ever more from the outside. Which is pitting union against union, as some will benefit from the lower cost of imported subcomponents , while others will lose out. Which overall leads to unions either having to become ever more exclusive, benefiting those who remain on the inside at the cost of leaving more and more to fend for themselves; or have to accept less generous compensation, if they want to stay as big and inclusive as they have traditionally been.
And, especially post 2009, even Germany hasn’t been able to avoid getting tangled up in the financialization rackets that have robbed the rest of the west of competitiveness. Even there, the flood of money, have made central bank and regulatory dicking around with nonsense, almost as important for a company’s stock price and ability to obtain competitively priced capital, as actually doing things efficiently. While in the private sphere, even Germans are being dumbed down enough to spend time concerning themselves with whether their poppeti is going up or down as a result of inane meddling. Instead of focusing on adding any sort of value. Which, since my poppeti “going up” without any value being added to it, inevitably means me being handed value-add taken from someone entirely unrelated. Which can never help but weakening what is left of cultural and trust bonds between people.
That old hag is Germany’s Achilles heel. She’s going to destroy whatever culture the Germans have left. Very sad to see a nation of seemingly intelligent people commit political suicide and drive the final nail into their own nation’s coffin.
The world has gone mad.
A minority government may be the only option here. I have written in the past that Merkel would win but would be forced to make another coalition with SPD and that this move would cement AfD as the true opposition party. The maneuver by the SPD won’t matter here- the polarization that AfD’s presence causes will mean that CDU/CSU and SPD will be driven together whether they like it or not.
I don’t understand European politics. I guess having 2 parties makes things much simpler. Now it seems our two parties are ‘Afraid to go against Trump’ and ‘Hate everything about Trump’.
The USA has ***ONE*** political party: everyone in Congress looks out for themselves and screws the taxpayers.
That is why Trump won the election, and its why the swamp is so manic depressive about everything he does. The swamp doesn’t like to have a mirror held up to their face, and they certainly don’t want Trump exposing Washington DC’s treachery to the masses.
Regardless of whether Merkel closes the borders or not, the existing muslim and African invaders will continue to be violent and unassimilable. Germans have already lost patience which explains Afd being the 3rd largest block. It also means (my opinion) Germany is one election away from the Afd growing to the 2nd or 1st largest block. If the Germans are smart they will embrace the Afd because following right behind the Afd are groups that want change and will do it without the govt (Civil War between Germans and muslims/African migrants).
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