"libertarians" biggest winner in today's German election?

The Free Democratic Party (FDP) made a strong showing in Germany's federal election today (and in an election in the northernmost state of Schleswig-Holstein as well), increasing its national vote share from just under 10% in 2005 to more than 14%. According to Deutsche Welle, "[t]he FDP champions sharply lower taxes, less regulation and friendliness to private enterprise." The gain allows Chancellor Angela Merkel to continue to govern despite small losses for her own Christian Democratic Union (CDU) by dropping her awkward "grand coalition" with the social democrats in favour of a coalition with the pro-reform FDP. The new coalition is known as the "black yellow" or "wasp" coalition as the FDP's party colour is yellow and Merkel's Christian Democrats are associated with the colour black (the CDU's pre-war predecessor, the Centre Party, "was represented in parliament by many black-robed Catholic priests"). Franz-Walter Steinmeier's Social Democratic Party (SPD) suffered heavy losses, "Steini girl" apparently not being able to replicate "Obama girl"'s success at delivering the Youtube vote, and the SPD's "financial sharks would vote for the FDP" advertising campaign not having much bite either.

The shift right continues a Europe-wide trend, with Norway as the notable exception, the Norwegians having kept left in elections earlier this month as a mountain of petrodollars petrokronors has kept the world's richest country-sized country blissfully floating above the economic pain being visited upon most of the rest of the western world.

Although Canada's Globe and Mail describes the FDP as "libertarian", it is rare to see the party described as such in either European or American media. For continentals, "liberal" suffices (the FDP calls themselves "Die Liberalen") and European liberals are understood to be opposed to the political left. In the USA, when the "libertarian" label has been associated with a politician it has all too frequently been with some sort of populist fringe character. The Libertarian Party's candidate for President last year was Bob Barr, who was one of the loudest defenders of the war on drugs and a southerner who has been described by his local media as 'the idol of the gun-toting, abortion-fighting, IRS-hating hard right wing of American politics." These types share with the political left a belief in conspiracies, the difference being that the menace takes the form of public institutions like the Federal Reserve or the government Department of Black Helicopters as opposed to private institutions like Big Business.

For global audiences, the most common adjective for the Economist endorsed FDP is thus "pro-business." An explicitly "pro-business" party would likely be a hard sell in America, because whereas Europeans may take a communal perspective and accept the FDP's platform of sound economic management at face value, Americans generally take an individual perspective that insists on reducing a party's platform into the question of whether it will increase government services for oneself or impact one's personal liberty (which would include one's personal tax liability).

According to the left leaning German daily Die Tageszeitung,

[FDP leader Guido] Westerwelle has restricted his political movement of his own free will. With this one sided outlook on free market policies he is steering the party toward the outer right edge of the political spectrum, in terms of social and economic policies. Today his party is the mirror opposite of the Left Party [die Linke] while the Greens have taken up a position in the traditional middle.

This view of Westerwelle (pictured here with Chancellor Merkel) may perhaps be supported by Westerwelle's "socialists and communists must not be allowed to rule Germany" campaign refusal to entertain a governing coalition with the SPD (a coalition the FDP was a part of several times in the former West Germany), and his comments about unions in 2003:

Trade unions are a plague on our country and [union bosses] are the pall-bearers of the welfare state and of the prosperity in our country.

That said, Westerwelle happens to have called for cuts in defence spending and the removal of US nuclear weapons from German soil, in addition to having complained of the "dramatic dismantling of civil rights" in Germany since the 9-11 terror attacks. The FDP leader - and likely soon to be newly minted vice chancellor and foreign minister - is also openly gay. None of this seems to have precluded the Christian Democratic Union, which "is still very much a Catholic Party" according to some, from deeming the Free Democrats their "preferred partner" in government prior to the election.

Serious beer drinkers are also serious voters--and they want tax cuts as much as anyone else.
- FDP party spokesman re Westerwelle's campaigning at Munich's Oktoberfest

European Parliament shifts right

In Germany, Angela Merkel's centre-right CDU held its own while the pro-business FDP made surprising gains at the expense of the social democrats (SPD).

The SPD had attacked the libertarian party, claiming that "finance sharks would vote for FDP" with the byline of "for a Europe with clear rules for all", which prompted the FDP to claim that "the bankrupt would vote SPD", with the byline of "for a sound budget policy".

The FDP clearly won the political battle, with the business-friendly party almost doubling its vote share from 5 years ago to 11%, and the SPD taking 20.8% of the vote, its worst election showing in post-war German history. Chancellor Merkel is likely feeling optimistic about her chances of being able to ditch her current "Grand Coalition" with the SPD in favour of a coalition with the FDP after the German federal election scheduled for the end of September.

The success of the far right in the weekend's elections for the European Parliament is understandable; tough times are prime times for xenophobic nationalists. But the failure of the social democrats across Europe (it was not just in Germany) "to take advantage of a financial crisis that might have been tailor-made for critics of free market excesses" (as the Economist put it) and make gains at the expense of parties like Germany's FDP is remarkable, all the more so given the contrasting state of retreat of the political right in America.

The only explanation I can think of is that the FDP's campaign slogan "for a sound budget policy" spoke to a constituency that has not had a meaningful presence in the USA for a while now. In any case, the declining influence of the social democrats in Europe seems serious:

It is not the threat from the extreme right that is the most striking characteristic of these elections, though clearly there is a shift to the right, and centre-right governments are likely to make more concessions to the far right. The real story is the crisis of the left.

We have been here before, in the 1930s when the net effect of the Depression was to strengthen the right and nullify the left - Labour was reduced to 50 MPs in 1931. The left rose again, but I am not optimistic about it being able to do so this time. Social democratic parties across Europe are in decline. That decline is not as dramatic as the communists a generation ago, but it is still marked. The European left relied on a working class that no longer exists in its old form, and in order to recover it will need to find a new constituency. That may be hard.

The left is in trouble everywhere: Labour in the UK, the French socialists, the Italian democrats. The Spanish socialists, one of the few leftwing parties to gain in recent years, have also slipped. The SPD in Germany are not doing as badly as expected, but they are down to around 20%, and these losses are not compensated by the votes for the New Left party. We have seen the demoralisation of the French left and a degree of disintegration of the left in Germany. Social democrats will need a new vision as well as a new constituency.
- Eric Hobsbawm