Posts Tagged ‘Angela Merkel’

A British ‘Grand Coalition’ would be destined for failure

23/01/2015, 04:46:01 PM

by Callum Anderson

The 2015 general election campaign is now slowly in full swing. With four months to go, many of the electorate are already beginning to tire of the petty point-scoring between the party leaders about the leadership debates.

Yet, the answer to the question former prime minister Ted Heath famously asked: ‘Who governs Britain?’ could be rather inconclusive come 8th May.

The opinion polls suggest that this election will be too close to call, with some suggesting we are entering an era of four, five or maybe even six party politics – though Labour Uncut’s editor Atul Hatwal’s makes a set of very plausible predictions.

But whatever happens, the implications for our democracy could be enormous.

It is highly unlikely that either Labour or the Conservatives will gain quite enough seats to gain a majority in Parliament. Parliamentary arithmetic will determine whether either party is best placed to seek to form a minority administration or enter a coalition, or confidence-and-supply arrangement with someone such as the Liberal Democrats or Scottish.

Yet there are some such as Ian Birrell and Mary Dejevsky who claim that a UK Grand Coalition – that is a coalition between Labour and the Conservatives – should not be fled out. They argue that the fact that both parties are currently marooned in the low 30s in terms of share of the vote, the two main parties would put their differences aside to govern in the national interest.

Does such an arrangement have a post-war precedent elsewhere? Yes.

Will it happen in Britain in 2015. No.

In Germany, a so-called ‘Grand Coalition’ (or, colloquially, GroKo) has been the principal form of government in the twenty-first century. Between 2005 and 2009, followed by the current administration since 2013, Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU) have shared power alongside the Social Democrats (SDP).

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If Dave thinks Merkel will ride to his rescue on Europe, he doesn’t understand German politics

23/12/2013, 11:18:25 AM

by Callum Anderson

After three months of intense negotiations, Germany finally has a new government. Angela Merkel’s CDU/CSU centre-right party will enter a so-called ‘Grand Coalition’ with the centre-left social democrats, the SPD, after its members ratified the agreement in a vote a week ago.

The arrangement, however, could represent the proverbial ‘spanner in the works’ for David Cameron’s plans to repatriate powers from the European Union to individual member states. Although Mr Cameron does have a natural ally for EU reform in Chancellor Merkel, her coalition partners, the SPD, are likely to prove a substantial stumbling block for any attempt by Ms Merkel to collaborate with the prime minister.

For a start, the Euroscepticism of David Cameron’s Conservative Party is completely at odds with the staunchly pro-EU stance of the SPD. A German government, with SPD involvement, will almost certainly take a dim view of any potential “Europe a la carte” arrangement that the prime minister seeks, especially in regard to social regulations such as the working time directive. Indeed, it is highly likely that it will actively try to block attempts to return EU powers to national governments.

Difficulty also represents itself in the form of the new foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who also served in the same capacity in the last ‘Grand Coalition’, between 2005 and 2009. Steinmeier not only frequently scuppered Merkel’s foreign policy plans during that time, but is also considered one of the Social Democrats’ closest links to the French Socialist party. Indeed, Steinmeier is reported to have said in December 2011 that he expected the UK to leave the EU, remarking that, “I fear the decisive step for Great Britain’s exit has already been made. If the regular meetings take the form of a Europe of 26 without Britain, then a process of alienation will become inevitable and irreversible.” It is therefore likely that he will not idly sit by and let Angela Merkel freely negotiate with David Cameron.

The possible ramifications of SPD hostility are obvious. By blocking Angela Merkel’s attempts to work with the UK on a new relationship between the EU and its member states, the SPD will deprive David Cameron of a possible key ally in claiming powers back from Brussels. If Germany is unable or unwilling to work with the UK prime minister, other Northern European states such as the Netherlands and Sweden are also likely to become sceptical. Similarly, any significant strengthening of Franco-German relations could further weaken London’s hand.

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Labour must hope that Cameron and Osborne do not have Merkel’s political nous

03/12/2013, 07:00:45 AM

by Callum Anderson

On Thursday, George Osborne will give his penultimate Autumn Statement before the 2015 general election. It is likely to be a highly political Autumn Statement. But whilst most of its content has yet to be leaked (at least at the time of writing), save for the likely rolling back of green levies – an attempt by the coalition to tackle the “cost of living” crisis – there is still scope for the prime minister and the chancellor to create huge problems for Ed Miliband and Ed Balls, if they can demonstrate that they are beginning to understand the economic concerns of voters, and shift to the centre ground.

Hopi Sen has already entertainingly set out how Osborne and the Conservatives could steal a march on the two Eds on the ‘cost of living crisis’. Increasing the minimum wage above inflation each year for the next five years, subject to the advice of the Low Pay Commission; raising the tax free personal allowance by £500 each year, and thus lifting millions of people from the burden of tax; reintroducing the 10p tax rate temporarily, benefitting all full-time workers on the minimum wage; and announcing an immediate cut in domestic energy bills, funded by a tax on overseas buyers of expensive property, are just a few measures that would leave the Labour hierarchy scratching their heads as to how to respond.

Indeed, such a strategy has been expertly executed by Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, since she was elected in 2005. Her Christian Union party (CDU) – Germany’s conservative party – has been the lead partner in the previous two coalition governments: first with the Social Democrats (SPD) between 2005 and 2009, and second with the Liberals (FPD) between 2009 and 2013, and is set to enter another Coalition with the SPD within the next month.

Ms Merkel has been particularly adept in not only keeping the CDU resolutely on the centre ground of German politics, but also shifting the balance of responsibility disproportionately to her junior coalition partners. For instance, during her first term, Ms Merkel astutely took advantage of the unwillingness of SPD members to enter a coalition government with her own CDU to, in the first instance, solidify the “Hartz” labour market and welfare reforms of her SPD predecessor, Gerhard Schroeder, as well as ensure that both parties shouldered the responsibility for the substantial austerity measures taken in response to the 2007-08 financial crisis.

Likewise in her second term, Ms Merkel has been, perhaps too successful, in allowing the FDP to shoulder much of the blame in the slow response to the Euro crisis of the last few years. I say too successful because the FDP, who have traditionally had more in common with the CDU than any other party in the German parliament, crashed at the federal elections in September to such an extent that they have no seats for the first time since 1945.

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Cameron’s EU policy is not about getting the best deal for Britain – it’s about keeping his own party quiet

24/01/2013, 11:00:15 AM

by Mark Stockwell

When we think of the great speeches in recent history, one perhaps stands out above all others: Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech at the Lincoln Memorial in March 1963. Nearly fifty years later, Barack Obama consciously channelled the spirit of that magnificent, spine-tingling oration in Monday’s inaugural address. It is, if you like, the gold standard by which major speeches are measured.

In his big set-piece on Europe on Wednesday, David Cameron seems instead to have sought inspiration from the man after whom MLK was named – the 16th-century German monk, Martin Luther, whose ideas and writings provided the theological underpinning of the Reformation.

Cameron must surely have had Luther in mind when he talked of Europe having “experience of heretics who turned out to have a point.” It is an allusion he must have hoped would not be lost on the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, herself the daughter of a Lutheran pastor. Judging from her response to the speech, indicating that she was open to negotiating “a fair compromise”, these hopes have not been entirely in vain.

Quite how this reference was greeted in some of the other chancelleries of Europe – in staunchly Catholic Italy, Spain, France or Poland, for example – is another matter. Other European leaders have been rather less complimentary in their responses, with the French in particular indulging in the sort of wryly-amused sneering in which they can legitimately claim to be world leaders.

Presumably Cameron feels this is relatively unimportant: the EU’s centre of gravity has shifted emphatically to Berlin as the eurozone crisis has unfolded. The prime minister no doubt believes it is primarily there, rather than Paris or Brussels, that the fate of his renegotiation strategy will be decided.

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Obama and Merkel can still make history, not be its victims

10/08/2011, 08:00:04 AM

by Jonathan Todd

People make their own history, as Karl Marx knew and Angela Merkel and Barack Obama cannot deny, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. Over hundreds of years America has evolved to a fiercely divided, uncompromising polis wedded to a system demanding compromise. Over decades Europe has achieved monetary union. Thousands of years of history hang over its fiscal consummation, which is required to avoid collapse and further calamity. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living.
One of the ironies of Marx is that communism was supposedly inevitable, but his tombstone declares that the point is to change the world, not interpret it. What’s to change if history’s terminus is already determined? What was the point of agitating publications like the Communist Manifesto if we were all, in spite of ourselves, destined for communism?

Such publications imply that Marx himself may not have seen communism as quite the iron certainty that rigid interpretations of his writing suggest. But one of the divisions between Marxism and much of the rest of the left concerns the extent to which we are prisoners of history. Parties such Labour predicate themselves on an assumption that the institutions of advanced capitalist democracies can be moulded to serve socially just ends. Ed Miliband’s father, of course, like other Marxists, thought this naive.

Recent economic events seem to vindicate Ralph Miliband. Political leadership seems oxymoronic when our nominal leaders appear only witnesses to events that they can barely fathom, let alone command. (In the non-economic sphere, our Tuscan prime minister is similarly bemused by the revenge of the lumpenproletariat). Nothing has happened to undermine James Carville’s famous wish to come back as the bond market and intimidate everybody. It’s these markets that are in the box seat and our political leaders that are cowered.

What they demand are credible plans from governments to repay their creditors. This isn’t unreasonable. I expect you’d want to see credible repayment plans before you leant non-trivial amounts of money. The governments of the third and fourth largest economies in the eurozone, Italy and Spain, seem increasingly unable to produce such plans. The downgrade of the USA, though unjustified, speaks to a similar lack of confidence in America’s ability to manage its debts.

While events seem to lead towards the largest country in the world that still professes to be communist, China, being an ever more dominant geo-political force, the Marxists should not be too triumphant. The markets are, of course, as powerful as James Carville’s wildest dream and Ralph Miliband’s bleakest nightmare. But they do not remain beyond the capacity of political leaders to have them becalmed. That is if political leaders do what it says on their tin; lead.
This doesn’t mean interpreting opinion polls as immovable. Germany, for example, could swing behind the full steps required to save the euro if Merkel articulated them well enough. It means seeing your electorate as intelligent beings capable of being won over by the force of your argument and your actions. Merkel and Obama can still do this. But only if they stop being intimidated not only by the bond markets but also by opinion polls, their political opponents and their own inevitable failure to hold in their minds every relevant fact and figure. (more…)

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How the Tories talk down consumer confidence

10/02/2011, 04:00:34 PM

by Richard Horton

There has been much talk in the business pages of a two speed economic recovery. A recovery that sees the economies of the developing world grow quickly while the developed world sluggishly heaves itself out of the remnants of the financial crisis. The long and painful rebalancing of a number of Europe’s economies, the UK’s included, is forecast. And yet life, or should that be economics, is not that straightforward. Within the developed world and especially within Europe, we are witnessing our very own two speed economic recovery.

Economists at ING Group describe how “a deep economic chasm” has formed between core euro-zone countries and the rest. The UK may well sit outside the euro-zone but that does not mean that it sits outside of Europe’s two speed economic recovery. At first glance, the GDP figures for the fourth quarter of 2010 may point to the UK being firmly rooted on the sluggish side of the European chasm. But what is more telling than GDP figures or manufacturing production numbers is consumer and business confidence.

Two weeks ago, the BBC reported the findings of a social research survey published by GfK NOP. The results showed how consumer confidence between December and January had plummeted by its largest monthly fall since 1994. UK consumers were not just more worried about their current financial situation compared to a year ago but they were also more concerned about the future of the economy compared to a year ago. In contrast, and on the other side of the European chasm, the same survey indicated that German consumer and business confidence had reached a four year high in January. (more…)

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Cameron’s European spin too far

01/11/2010, 09:00:15 AM

by Denis MacShane

Having lived through years of European councils, I am not surprised that David Cameron, like his predecessors, is obsessed with the need of all EU leaders to spin their way to “victory” headlines for domestic consumption. Instead of a common news conference where EU leaders would have to declare in front of each other what they had done or decided, each national press corps meets with its national leader to be fed the line.

David Cameron is no different. He went into his own news conference after the EU council with clear objectives.

First, to underline that the European Parliament’s overblown ambition for a six per cent increase in the EU budget was trimmed back.

Second, to throw up as big a smoke-screen as possible about the need for an EU treaty change which, under Cameron’s previous pledges and rhetoric, would require a referendum. Every EU treaty alters the balance of power between national control and an enhanced role for the EU. If that were not the case, there would be no point writing new treaty language. (more…)

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