The members of Germany's SPD have just voted to approve a grand coalition with Angela Merkel's CDU. Germany will have a stable, if likely very uninspired, government for the next four years.
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I personally think this was the right decision: If the SPD had voted no, we would soon have had new elections. The party would have done even worse. And then they would have had to go into government anyway, because they're needed to form *some* kind of government.
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But the fact that voting for the grand coalition was likely the best available choice doesn't mean that it was a good, or even a decent, course of action.
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More likely than not, the SPD will suffer from being in the grand coalition for the next four years, just as it suffered for the past four years. This means that two big and scary changes might happen by the 2021 elections.
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First, the SPD and the CDU may no longer hold 50% of seats in the Bundestag between them. (Until recently, they had ~75%)
Second, the far-right AfD may then be stronger than the SPD.
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Second, the far-right AfD may then be stronger than the SPD.
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In other words, it's perfectly possible that the SPD is now in terminal decline, just like the PS I'm France.
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To avoid that fate, the party now has to:
1) Set out a bold yet pragmatic vision for making globalization work for ordinary citizens.
2) Dare to have real fights within the coalition, even at the cost of some instability, to show what you're fighting for.
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1) Set out a bold yet pragmatic vision for making globalization work for ordinary citizens.
2) Dare to have real fights within the coalition, even at the cost of some instability, to show what you're fighting for.
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More broadly, the danger now is that the whole German political class will pretend that everything has gone back to normal. It hasn't. The populists are rising rapidly. Moderate parties are in danger of losing their majorities.
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The only justification of the grand coalition would be to implement an ambitious program of reform in Germany *and* Europe. But Merkel, in her cautious, humdrum way, is likely to blow it. She is, in some ways, the modem Metternich: expert at administering a fading status quo.
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And that's just not enough to halt the rise of the populists. Which is why I am both somewhat relieved that the SPD voted for the the grand coalition and really concerned about what the next four years will bring.
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