SPD split after low poll result

Germany's Social Democrats (SPD) squabbled yesterday about their future strategy following the party's disastrous performance…

Germany's Social Democrats (SPD) squabbled yesterday about their future strategy following the party's disastrous performance in Sunday's state election in Hamburg. The SPD polled its lowest vote in the city since the second World War, after a campaign promising tough action on law and order and a referendum on the euro.

Mr Kurt Beck, the prime minister of the Rhineland-Palatinate, called yesterday for the party to abandon crime as an issue in the run-up to next September's federal election.

"Protecting the public from violent crime is and will remain one of the main tasks of the state. We need a policy to strengthen and modernise the police and the justice system. But law and order is not an appropriate election issue," he said.

Mr Beck received support from the left of the SPD but Mr Gerhard Schroeder, the prime minister of Lower Saxony, insisted that Sunday's result offered no grounds for rethinking party policy.

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Mr Schroeder hopes to challenge Dr Kohl at next year's election, fighting on a platform similar to Mr Tony Blair's successful formula in Britain. The SPD last week adopted a new, business-friendly economic policy devised by Mr Schroeder, who is feared by Dr Kohl's Christian Democrats on account of his appeal to conservative voters.

Although he does not openly oppose the euro, he has called for the single currency to be postponed if Germany fails to meet the strict conditions for entry.

Many Social Democrats feel uncomfortable with Mr Schroeder's style and with the party's lurch to the right. But most will probably back him as their best hope of ending 15 years in the political wilderness in Bonn.

The SPD will not name its candidate for chancellor until next spring, after Mr Schroeder has faced the electorate in Lower Saxony. He says he will not stand against Dr Kohl if his vote drops by more than 2 per cent in the state election.

Opinion polls predict that Dr Kohl will lose if he has to face Mr Schroeder next year. But the chancellor has defied such predictions before and his ratings were even worse a year before the 1994 election, which he won narrowly.

Dr Kohl's Christian Democrats saw their support rise by more than 5 per cent in Hamburg but his coalition partners in the Liberal Free Democrats (FDP) were wiped out, winning no seats at all.

Tensions within the governing coalition flared up at the weekend when both the FDP and the Bavarian Christian Social Union vetoed a proposal by Dr Kohl's Christian Democrats to increase tax on mineral oil. Some younger members of Dr Kohl's party have begun to distance themselves from the chancellor in preparation for the power struggle likely to follow his departure.

The chancellor is banking on an upturn in the economy to win him a record fifth term in office and his advisers are quietly praying that the SPD will choose Mr Oskar Lafontaine as its candidate rather than the popular Mr Schroeder.

The economy has already begun to pick up but unemployment remains high and there is little sign of the feel-good factor returning.

On the other hand, no German election since the second World War has resulted in a change of government. Power has always changed hands as a result of a midterm change of sides by one of the ruling coalition partners.

The SPD appeared to retreat from Mr Schroeder's mild Euroscepticism, declaring in a resolution for its forthcoming party conference that postponing the euro could have disastrous consequences. The party called for a jobs pact to be granted the same status as the stability pact governing Economic and Monetary Union, declaring that "people are more important than money".