Rarely has a government crashed a country so quickly. Elected two years ago, Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s ‘progressive’ coalition has shown a truly epic level of incompetence and ideological pig-headedness. The government of Social Democrats (SPD), Greens, and Liberal Free Democrats (FDP) were nicknamed the ‘traffic light coalition’ because of their red-yellow-green party colours—but now stands for a total car-crash coalition. According to polls, 80% of the population are dissatisfied.
All three parties have suffered a dramatic loss of public support, with only one third of voters still backing them. The latest car-crash the government has produced is a momentous budget crisis. They had tried to fiddle with the ‘debt brake’ rule in the constitution but were stopped by a Constitutional Court ruling. Now the government faces a 60 billion euro budget deficit and must make painful cuts or risk another constitutional crisis.
Yet the biggest factor fuelling voters’ anger is that Germany has sleepwalked again into a migrant crisis, just as in 2015. Around half a million ‘asylum’ arrivals have come this year alone, in addition to around one million Ukrainians who are in receipt of social benefits that are probably more generous than anywhere else in Europe.
The tsunami of asylum seekers and immigrants has worsened already severe pressure on the housing market, and driven many local authorities’ budgets and capacities almost to the breaking point. The cost of accommodating and providing for immigrants amounts to just under 50 billion euros this year, according to Finance Ministry internal calculations reported in Die Welt. For lack of other accommodations, Berlin is housing some asylum seekers in luxury hotel apartments.
Amid a general cost-of-living crisis for the overall German population, this overly generous support for foreigners is causing consternation. Furthermore, there has been a marked rise in violent crime in recent years, as the Federal Criminal Police Office recently had to acknowledge. Who could have predicted that after importing hundreds of thousands of young angry men from broken, mainly Muslim countries in the Middle East and Africa? Voters are rightly up in arms about the government’s abysmal failure to control immigration.
Yet the Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU), the main opposition party, are only partially benefiting from voters’ dissatisfaction. The CDU/CSU backed Merkel’s open door policy in 2015-16. They are now being outflanked and even overtaken in the East in truly dramatic fashion by the right-wing ‘populist’ challenger party Alternative for Germany (AfD), now polling second in national polls at more than 20%. AfD’s share has more than doubled since the last election two years ago. The Right’s sharp rise began in late 2022 following protests against a highly controversial Green scheme to ban gas boilers, but the party now campaigns chiefly against the government’s truly irresponsible immigration policies.
Chancellor Scholz, the SPD politician who took his oath as Angela Merkel’s successor on 8 December 2021, is plumbing the depths of unpopularity. Dubbed the ‘Scholzomat’ because of his robotic way of speaking and acting, Scholz lacks the rhetorical skills and the energy or imagination to live up to today’s enormous challenges. He is not just one of the most boring politicians in Germany, but also one without the remotest idea of how to turn things round.
During 2021’s election campaign, Scholz, a former mayor of Hamburg and later finance minister, portrayed himself as a safe pair of hands. He promised earnestly that, “If you ask for leadership, you’ll get it with me,” a promise that even SPD voters can now see was utterly farcical. Only 10% of voters credit him with “strong leadership,” and less than one in three says he is competent, according to the most recent Forsa opinion polls.
Germany is completely devoid of direction, a country with no-one in charge—except, perhaps, the Greens, who swagger about making wild pronouncements about a ‘green economic miracle’ with their customary mix of arrogance and ignorance. Annalena Baerbock, the young, inexperienced minister of foreign affairs, has promised to introduce a ‘feminist foreign policy,’ but she seems helpless in the face of the momentous challenges posed by the Russian-Ukraine war. The Greens have converted from a ‘pacifist’ party into the most belligerent party of all.
At present, the government is caught up in a particularly severe crisis after the Constitutional Court ruled that a proposed scheme—to transfer billions from a COVID fund into debt-financed climate policies, and thereby circumvent Germany’s debt brake—is illegal. Consequently, the coalition is staring into a double-digit billion hole in the national budget, and it seems to have no way to deal with it. Any company director who conducted business like this would have to resign.
But the budget fiasco is just one of their remarkable achievements. Germany’s economic growth forecasts for this year and next are the worst of the G7 economies. After decades as the continent’s industrial powerhouse, Germany is once again becoming ‘the sick man of Europe.’
Extremely high energy prices (the highest electricity prices in Europe) are endangering our traditional industries. Senior figures from the chemical industry and raw material producers have warned that closures might be imminent. Investment has dried up. The construction industry has slumped. High inflation has particularly hurt low-income consumers. The figures for major insolvencies in retail indicate the depth of the crisis.
In an embarrassing statement last year, the economy minister, Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck (a former author of children’s books), has shown that he does not quite understand the concept of bankruptcy. He asserted that companies who cease to operate and cannot sell their products any more do not necessarily have to be bankrupt, sparking ridicule and consternation among the business community. The Free Democrats, once seen as the voice of German business, have haemorrhaged business support as well as voter trust.
Germany is facing not only a cyclical economic downturn, but structural impediments to stability. Although rising prices for natural gas were both inevitable and global, as a consequence of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the coalition has made matters much worse by insisting on terminating Germany’s last nuclear plants in the spring of 2023. It is hard to conceive of a stupider move than to intentionally cut several gigawatts of energy supply in the middle of the worst energy crisis in decades. This kind of energy policy looks almost suicidal.
Germany now imports record amounts of highly expensive power (much of it deriving from nuclear and coal sources) from neighbouring countries, plus very costly LNG from the United States and the Gulf autocracies. Furthermore, Germany has restarted some old coal power plants. Under this oh-so-climate-conscious coalition, the energy mix has grown ironically much ‘browner’ than before—notwithstanding the frantic installation of more and more windmills in every corner of the country, destroying the beauty of the landscape without improving energy security. On the contrary, power supply is becoming more expensive, more volatile, and less reliable.
It is not only over energy that Germany is having a breakdown. The Chancellor pompously announced a Zeitenwende (historical turning point) after the Russian invasion in Ukraine. More money was promised to rebuild Germany’s army, the Bundeswehr, and to strengthen defensive capacities which are in a sorry state after decades of underinvestment and neglect, especially during the sixteen years of Merkel’s tenure. But despite all the rhetoric, the Zeitenwende has not materialised. There have been only inadequate efforts to strengthen national security, and the Bundeswehr has been even more depleted by giving away tons of material to Ukraine.
While Germany’s hard power continues to erode, the coalition is eagerly advancing the progressive woke agenda. There are strong forces in the coalition striving to remove the few remaining pro-life elements in abortion law. And they have pressed ahead with causes dear to the pro-trans movement, like a ‘self-identification’ law that allows a change in gender registration once every year, including for minors. Embarrassingly, Nancy Faeser, the minister of the interior and for sports, attended the football World Cup in Qatar whilst wearing an armband with rainbow colours emblazoned with the words ‘One Love.’ Appropriately enough, the German national team lost badly in the tournament. It seemed symbolic that as athletic standards fall, there should be a compensatory increase in ideological virtue signalling. At least there, Germany can be a champion!
Meanwhile, the government is spending hundreds of millions of Euros every year to help dubious pressure groups and Antifa NGOs ‘fight the Right’ (Kampf gegen rechts). It now appears the government’s sole remaining raison d’être is to prevent the further rise of AfD. Some senior figures have even called for an outright ban of the party, which would be extremely convenient for them—especially in eastern Germany, where the AfD is now the chief opposition.
Elsewhere, banning the main opposition party would be considered a step towards tyranny. In France, it would be unthinkable to ban Marine Le Pen’s National Rally, the strongest opposition force. A debate in Viktor Orbán’s Hungary to dissolve the main opposition party would be condemned by all the right-thinking people in the West as an indication of a highly undemocratic course of the government.
But it is not just the leftwing parties in Germany which are screaming for a ‘firewall’ against the AfD. Frustratingly for conservatives, the SPD-Greens-FDP coalition only exists because an alternative, a right-of-centre majority coalition cannot play out. A coalition formed of the CDU, the FDP, and the AfD is also regarded by CDU politicians as beyond the pale.
Leftwing ideas dominate national discourse only because conservatives allow them to. The majority opinion in the country is right-of-centre, according to the polls. The “traffic light coalition” and the Left would implode overnight, if the parties of the centre-Right and the Right would only cooperate. But for that to happen, the CDU/CSU would first need to confront their own complicit past: the sixteen years of Angela Merkel’s drift and weakness, which did so much damage to the country. Only then can there be the fundamental reorientation that Germany—and Europe—so urgently need.
