GERMANY’S EMINENTLY quotable finance minister, Peer Steinbrück, has undermined the election campaign of his own Social Democratic Party (SPD) by admitting that a second grand coalition is the likely outcome of the September 27th general election.
He said a return of the grand coalition with Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU) would be “no bad thing” and that, after tackling the financial crisis together, the two parties had “more in common than ever”.
His concession makes him the first senior politician to confirm what all of political Berlin suspects: Germany is facing another inconclusive election and another four years of co-habitation between the SPD and the CDU.
“We’re not looking for another grand coalition but cannot rule it out,” the finance minister said in Hamburg, suggesting the SPD could “recover” in another cross-party coalition.
Mr Steinbrück admitted that the SPD cabinet ministers – if not party rank-and-file – could quite happily live with another grand coalition government.
“The co-operation with the chancellor in the crisis was good,” he said. “I’m not going to start throwing stones now just because we’re in an election campaign.”
Although the party is languishing 12 points behind the CDU in polls, SPD leaders refuse to comment officially on the likelihood of another alliance with the CDU.
Analysts suggest this is because the SPD is still clinging to its only other viable option: a three-way coalition with the Greens and the liberal Free Democrats (FDP).
Mr Steinbrück has blown a hole in that strategy with remarks that highlight the central contradiction at the heart of its election campaign.
SPD candidate Frank Walter Steinmeier has warned voters of “brutal social cuts” if the FDP gets into power with Dr Merkel.
Yet polls suggest his only realistic chance to become chancellor is to win over the very same FDP as a junior partner in a three-way coalition with the Greens.
The FDP is expected to rule out that option at its party conference at the weekend in Potsdam.
“So now the cat is out of the bag,” said FDP general secretary Dirk Niebel yesterday. With the SPD still 12 points behind the CDU, he said the party has “officially given up hope of winning the election”.
The Green Party called Mr Steinbrück’s remarks a “political declaration of bankruptcy”.
After irritating senior SPD leaders in Berlin, Mr Steinbrück retreated to the official party line yesterday, saying that his party’s election aim is to prevent the FDP replacing them in a CDU-led government. He added that he thought Mr Steinmeier would make the better chancellor.
Mr Steinbrück isn’t the only politician with the grand coalition on his mind. Leaders of the CSU, the CDU’s Bavarian sister party, are concerned that Dr Merkel is doing too little to appeal to traditional conservative voters.
With that in mind, party leader Horst Seehofer has ordered his party to produce its own economic programme to, in the words of an adviser, “let voters know what an alternative to the grand coalition would look like”.