Modern Germany’s greatest political puzzle is how, since chancellor Angela Merkel took office in 2005, opinion polls have shown a consistent centre-left majority against her.
But a year before the chancellor’s third term ends, her Social Democrat (SPD) junior partners are now considering the previously unthinkable: dumping Merkel to chase that centre-left majority.
Amid growing worries over migration, security and social cohesion, SPD strategists believe Germany’s growing “Merkel must go” mood is an opportunity to dump her and her Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in favour of a three-way federal alliance with the Green and Left (Linke) parties.
For long-serving left-wingers such as Gregor Gysi, co-founder and former Left Party leader, new thinking is required to counter the “new situation” posed by the rise of the far-right Alternative für Deutschland – largely at the expense of Germany’s big two parties. “The SPD and CDU are now losing [support] together,” he told the Tageszeitung (Taz) daily.
For seven years until 2005, the SPD and Greens ruled Germany under chancellor Gerhard Schröder but the SPD has, to date, limited its co-operation with the Left Party to state politics.
The SPD’s wariness of the Left at federal level is historic, strategic and personal. The Left Party is the historic heir to East Germany’s ruling communists who, in the post-war years, forcibly swallowed the eastern SPD and then built the Berlin Wall – two unforgivable sins for older SPD supporters.
Meanwhile, Left Party supporters are staunch Nato critics and opponents of German foreign military deployments, the first of which took place under SPD rule, making a common security policy difficult to imagine.
Then there is lingering personal animosity over the mass defections from SPD to the Left Party in protest at Schröder’s drastic welfare reforms.
The SPD has never recovered, lingering 10 points lower than a decade ago at 23 per cent. But after two grand coalitions as Merkel’s junior partner, senior SPD figures admit there is only one option to ever lead another government.
And the three-way “Red-Red-Green” coalition likely to emerge after Berlin’s state election last Sunday has triggered speculation about a similar alliance emerging from next year’s federal poll.
The SPD quietly buried its fundamental opposition to federal alliances with the Left Party after the 2013 election. Now, the two parties hold regular, private meetings at all levels. Since Sunday’s Berlin state elections, that flirtation has gone public. Senior SPD man Thomas Oppermann conceded on national radio there were still major SPD-Left policy gaps – but, “why should that not change by the Bundestag election?”
Left Party co-leader Bernd Riexinger responded warmly, saying it was “very possible to create a majority left of centre”.
But his price for co-operation: a “break” with the previous decade of deregulation and a push for balanced budget in favour of a massive public investment programme. Securing an SPD social policy shift back to its working class roots, Riexinger predicted, could prove a bigger challenge than agreeing a common policy on Nato.
As Germany enters federal election mode, many political watchers too see many gaps to be bridged before next September, with grudging SPD backing for transatlantic trade deals as much of a problem for the Left’s globalisation critics as their Russia-friendly stance on the Ukraine crisis is to SPD centrists.
That said, next spring offers a few chances to test the waters: three state elections and, in February, the possibility of choosing a joint candidate as Germany’s next federal president – and pushing her or him through against CDU opposition.
Two dilemmas remain. The first: German voters. An ARD public television poll this month showed a three-way Red-Red-Green alliance commanding 43 per cent support – within spitting distance of a Bundestag majority. But the same poll showed just 31 per cent of voters favour such a centre-left alliance – with 67 per cent opposed.
Curiously, the poll suggested Germany’s most popular next coalition – with 46 per cent – is the second dilemma, the one that could shatter dreams of a Red-Red-Green pact next year: a Green coalition with Merkel’s CDU.
Green co-leader Cem Özdemir has declined to be drawn on whether an SPD-Green-Left alliance in Berlin’s city state government was a blueprint for next year’s Bundestag election.
“Berlin,” he insisted, “is a model for Berlin.”