GERMANY - The country’s traditional powerhouses on the centre-left and the centre-right face a moment of reckoning. Postwar German politics has a reputation for being moderate, consensual and a touch on the dull side. But there have been moments of high drama. In November 1959, for example, the Social Democratic party (SPD) abandoned its historic ambition to replace capitalism with socialism, dropped the Marxist account of class struggle and began to pitch itself as a broad-based Volkspartei (people’s party).
History vindicated the decision. For the next 50 years or so, the SPD vied for power with the country’s other great political force, the CDU (and its CSU Bavarian ally), as both parties regularly achieved a vote share of over 40%.
Famed for their practice of big-tent politics, what the CDU and SPD would give for such numbers now. The agonies of Brexit and the rise of rightwing populism have claimed the political limelight around Europe. But those looking for clues to the continent’s future would do well to watch Germany closely over the coming weeks.
The traditional powerhouses, which formed a “grand coalition” in 2018 to run the country, are each divided and dispirited. A succession of rebuffs in regional elections has led to calls in both parties for more radical and distinct policies. Later this month, in an innovation born of desperation, SPD members will vote in a new leader. They will choose between two joint candidacies, one from the left and one from the right of the movement. To say that there is pressure to get this right would be an understatement.