There are two pieces of good news from the national election in Germany yesterday: 1) the Greens suffered a major setback, with their original intention to become the biggest political party getting ruined by a 2) reality that saw voters giving social, economic and labor issues a clear preference against the climate (44%, 20% and 18% respectively). The Social Democrats are the main benefactor of that, winning the election with 25.7% of the vote, against the Christian Democrats which dropped by 8% to 24.1%; the Greens came out third, with 14.8%, followed by the Free Democrats with 11.5%.
The Social Democrats’ Olaf Scholz is in the best position to become next Chancellor, which, if he continues to reject a continuation of the outgoing Grand Coalition with the Christian Democrats, would be possible only in a coalition with the Greens and the Free Democrats. If Scholz failed to compose a coalition with those two, the only other option for him would be another three-party coalition with the Christian Democrats and the Free Democrats—which has the advantage of keeping the Greens out. Being the two “kingmakers,” the Greens and the Free Democrats are expected to make deals behind the scenes to be in the game, which implies the Greens are in the next government.
The Christian Democrats’ Armin Laschet still has a chance to become Chancellor, if Scholz fails, but also for him only a three-party combination with the Greens and the Free Democrats would work. A big instability factor for such a government would be the disunity that has emerged in the Christian Democrats after 16 years of Merkel’s chancellorship, with influential currents not really backing Laschet (one of the causes of the migration of 1.5 million votes from the CDU to the SPD). A new Grand Coalition (Chancellor Scholz, Vice Chancellor Laschet) keeping the Greens out would still have a majority in the newly-elected Bundestag with 402 of 730 seats, by the way.
If Scholz were Chancellor, what does that imply for Germany? His own and the SPD’s pro-green orientation which couples the economy and labor market with the climate issue, will prompt a rough awakening soon, since Germany can’t depend on renewables. Germany has to exit from the nuclear power exit and from the coal exit as well. It escaped several potential blackout crises during the first half of 2021, caused by a 40% drop in wind power, only because it still had six nuclear power plants running and could mobilize reserves in lignite production. That delivers a clear message, everything else is a sheer fantasy.
The Green Deal and Great Reset (which Scholz also is part of as the outgoing Finance Minister) will ruin the German industry and the industrial jobs. Citizens who voted for the Social Democrats, which could not deliver on their election campaign promises, would soon feel bitterly betrayed.
Scholz’s other problem would be the strategic situation after the Afghanistan disaster (which was not addressed in the entire election campaign). If the Greens get the Foreign Ministry in a new government, geopolitics against Russia and China will continue, a reasonable policy of cooperation with both states and the Belt and Road orientation will be sabotaged by the Greens. Green foreign policy would be regime-change policy justified by the fake human rights issues (Navalny, Hong Kong, womens’ rights, and the like) and the idea that states not going along with the COP26 roadmap have to be punished.
It is dubious against this background that Germany will have a stable new government capable to deal constructively with the big challenges ahead.
