Germany: Germany's election campaign got off to a brisk start after chancellor Schröder distanced himself from his Green Party coalition partners and his former finance minister turned foe, Oskar Lafontaine, quit the Social Democrats (SPD) to back a new left-wing party.
"I am proud of our work in government . . . but elections have their own rules," said Mr Schröder to weekly newspaper Die Zeit. "And one of the time-honoured rules of election campaigns is that one fights for one's own strength. Everyone tries to win the most votes possible against every other opponent."
The chancellor promised a personalised election between himself and CDU leader Angela Merkel but declined to say whether the SPD was planning any joint election events with the Green Party, such as the 2002 event in front of the Brandenburg Gate with foreign minister Joschka Fischer of the Green Party.
Mr Schröder's remarks were echoed in stronger terms by leading SPD figures, cooling down even further the increasingly chilly atmosphere between the SPD and Greens.
"I cannot imagine that Gerhard Schröder will enter a grand coalition under Angela Merkel," said Katrin Göring-Eckardt, the Green Party leader.
Dr Merkel appeared to reject the notion of a grand coalition yesterday, saying: "It is beyond question that only united can the CDU and the [ Liberal] FDP act as an alternative to SPD-Green."
SPD leaders yesterday celebrated the final departure from the party ranks, after 39 years, of Mr Lafontaine. He was once Mr Schröder's closest ally and a leading architect of the SPD's 1998 election success.
He was ousted by Mr Schröder as finance minister and SPD chairman in March 1999 and has retreated to the political sidelines, but remained in the party and remained a thorn in the chancellor's side.
"I've always said that my formal membership is over when the SPD goes into a general election with Agenda 2010 and Hartz IV," he said yesterday, referring to the government's reform programme he has criticised bitterly from the pages of conservative tabloid Bild.
He has agreed in principle to stand for the left-wing grouping Electoral Alternative and Social Justice (WASG). The new party captured just 2 per cent of the vote in the weekend election in North-Rhine Westphalia, its first electoral outing.
Mr Lafontaine suggested the most effective way to make a splash in the general election was an electoral pact, or even a merger, with the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), the successor party to East Germany's communists. "It makes no sense having two parties left of the SPD," he said.
The move could be an attractive option for thePDS. The party's limited electoral success has been restricted to the former East Germany. It fell just short of the 5 per cent hurdle required to enter parliament at the last general election and is represented in the Bundestag by just two directly-elected members.
A strengthened left-wing alternative to the SPD would hope to capitalise on disillusioned SPD voters. "The two parties could go together . . . but chancellor Schröder has, with this time pressure, made it considerably less likely that it will happen, but I wouldn't rule it out," said Lothar Bisky, leader of the PDS, in a radio interview.
Leading SPD figures in Berlin were dismissive of any threat from a new left-wing party.
"Historically, it has always been the case that left-wing splinter groups fail and only strengthen the right," said SPD economics expert Rainer Wend.