This year in politics threatens to be eventful. The British Government is set to trigger Article 50 on the 29th of March. The Netherlands had its parliamentary election in which the new political landscape of one of Europe’s most stable countries has been laid bare. Mark Rutte’s VVD were returned as the largest party in a parliament that is more fractious than at any time in recent memory. The Dutch Labour Party have collapsed, becoming a rump party so pitiful that it makes Corbyn’s Labour look positively robust. Wilders’ rise to the pole position in the Tweede Kamer was checked by his seeming inability to realise that screaming shrilly and being generally obnoxious is not the best way to capture the confidence of a generally conservative, change-averse electorate that is almost Canadian in its obsession with consensus. He lacks the finesse of a Jimmie Åkesson.
France aside, French politics are too tedious and painful to discuss at the moment, Germany’s campaign season has started in earnest. Tiny Saarland, among Germany’s smallest Bundesländer with fewer than 800,000 voters had its regional election on the 26th of March. Saarland is interesting only because it is split fairly evenly. It was formerly a stronghold of the Social Democrats – not terribly surprising considering that it has traditionally relied on coal mining and heavy industry. In the past 20 years the Christian Democrats have become the leading party, in part helped by a split on the left.
In the 1990s there was a battle between the reformist, Blairite faction led by Gerhard Schröder and the traditional leftist faction led by Oskar Lafontaine. After Schröder’s unequivocal triumph and ultimate political demise, Lafontaine split from the Social Democrats taking many of his supporters with him, forming the Labour and Social Justice Party. In 2007 Lafontaine’s party merged with the Party for “Social Democracy”, the successor of the Socialist Unity Party which had ruled East Germany with an iron fist. Oskar Lafontaine, like Erich Honecker, is from Saarland. This new party, “die Linke”, have been a thorn in the SPD’s side since their reduction to Angela Merkel’s handbag-holder status in 2005. The Social Democrats had categorically ruled out working with them due to their ideological rigidity and incapability to accept that the golden era of social democracy had long passed. The “Grand Coalitions” that have comprised two out of the most recent three governments might well have been loveless, but they were stable.
The SPD dragged the monstrous Martin Schulz back from Brussels in an effort to revive their fortunes. The SPD’s fortunes have sunk so low that the only “credible” figure they had was a slightly-tainted Eurocrat with all the charm of Nikita Khrushchev’s warmed-up corpse. Schulz lacks the ideological rigidity of Lafontaine, but his views are closer to Lafontaine’s than they are to Schröder’s. Schulz is the first SPD leader to openly support a coalition government with die Linke or die Linke and the Greens. Dispirited SPD supporters have flocked back to the party resulting in their being competitive for the first time in a decade. Merkel’s march to a fourth term as Chancellor is no longer seen as a given. Saarland was supposed to be Schulz’s first scalp. The Bundesland that played so prominent a role in German socialism was supposed to be the birthplace of its glorious rise from the ashes of obscurity — the launching pad of Germany’s first truly leftist government since the 1970s. Instead, the Christian Democrats enjoyed a swing of 5.5pc which left them only two seats short of an overall majority in the regional parliament. Most humiliatingly, the Greens failed to return a single seat. Die Linke saw their share of the vote decline by 3.3pc, the SPD by 1pc.
What Schulz and the SPD have failed to grasp is that there are many, many Germans who fear a leftist government. Many voters who had flirted with voting for the AfD or sit out the election out of disgust for Merkel and her “refugee” calamity have been frightened into returning to the fold. I admit that I am among them. As disgusted as I am with her, I would rather take my chances with a weakened, chastened Merkel than risk a leftist government led by the Anglophobe Schulz.
Boadicea's Chariot 
So often in politics everywhere better the devil you know than the devil you don’t!
CO: Unusually, both are devils we know — hence by absolute horror. Merkel has made many mistakes and she is guilty of many short-sighted policy blunders. At the same time, Germany has fared better than much of Europe in the last decade and there are signs of improvement in some ways. For example, the rail network while unremarkable is not quite as dire as it was 3-4 years ago. The government is also getting rather good at deporting people and making benefits paid out to gimmegrants so paltry that they’re hardly worth a sneer.On the other hand, Schulz would overspend and likely commit Germany to underwriting EU debts. Germany is constitutionally obligated to have a balanced budget so just when improvements were finally being made, that money would have to go elsewhere.His anti-UK stance would cause Germany more harm than Britain.
Interesting. One hears so little of the details, only the bigger picture from a distance.
I blame proportional representation!
Janus: It would be wiser to blame Alex Salmond. To understand Germany’s constitutional arrangement you have to understand Hitler’s rise to power. Hitler’s NSDAP did not win a majority of votes in either election held in 1932 — but they were the largest bloc. If Germany had the first-past-the-post system, it was feared, a party like the NSDAP “could” win a majority of seats in parliament. The post-war German constitution was written during a time when the USSR took advantage of any strong showing by a Communist party. It is impossible to have a minority government — every German government is to have a majority to preserve its legitimacy.
I was teasing of course. Interestingly enough, the UK faces a period during which the Tories will hold ‘too much’ power. Labour is crumbling away, possibly fragmenting; the LimpDims are a legend in their own imaginations; the SNPs seem likely to have to challenge for seats next time and could lose half. The Tories have already talked about redrawing the constituency map to rebalance the Labour heartlands. So, unless Brexit is mismanaged bigtime, blue will dominate politics. Our natural tendency to grumble about the status quo could breathe new vigour into Labour after Brexit; Scotland could vote to leave the Union but I have the feeling that when Brexit kicks in, the majority will want to avoid disruption while we face change ‘together’.
Janus: Constituency boundaries in the UK do need to be redrawn. Labour manipulated them in order to secure their electoral position. Suburban and rural voters are at a disadvantage as the current borders favour urban centres. Labour will struggle for at least one or two more Parliaments. Does Labour want to be a party of ideological purity, or does it want to be a party of government? Corbyn and his supporters want ideological purity, even if that reduces Labour to permanent minority. Eventually, Corbyn will have to relinquish power and someone far more pragmatic can take over — if Corbyn doesn’t drive out all reasonable MPs. North of the Border, Scots Labour still haven’t accepted that “business as usual” will no longer be accepted. Labour could formally rely on solid support in Scotland — especially in vote-rich Glasgow. They can no longer and as the political divide in Scotland is no longer “left” or “right”, but “unionist” and “anti-unionist”, people who in the past would never have voted Tory are voting Tory and will continue to do so.
Ms Fishface found herself in a quandary. She raised the stakes so high since becoming First Minister that she had to take the risk of being shot down by Westminster — with the support of most Scots. Other than that vocal fourth of Scotland, there is little support for another independence referendum. Scotland is divided and, some argue, at risk of balkanisation. I’ve read numerous comments by people who voted “yes” in 2014 that they were deceived, that they were caught up in the moment and just want life to return to normal again.