Skip to main content

Liberalism resurgent (in Germany)

As I predicted some time ago, the Free Democrats: the German Liberal Party, has seen a dramatic increase in its vote at the Federal elections. It has been dramatic progress, a nearly a third increase in the FDP vote, to give them 15% and the near certainty of forming a coalition with the Conservative CDU/CSU, under the Chancellorship of Angela Merkel.

The previous "Grand coalition" of the CDU/CSU with the Social Democrats can now be replaced with a far more radical free market led government. Profound congratulations to Guy Westerwelle and all of the FDP team.

The pan European trend of the slow decay of Socialism is, yet again, mirrored in this result from Berlin. Nevertheless it is not the Conservatives that are mere beneficiaries of the swing of the pendulum. The election result confirms the continuing demand for greater political choice. The combined vote of the FDP, the Greens and the Left party is greater than either the SPD or the CDU/CSU.

This latest election result in Europe shows that voters are increasingly rejecting the old left/right choices and are seeking a more diverse set of ideas.

That should give politicians across the political spectrum some pause for thought. As the polls for the Liberal Democrats in the UK now begin to match or better the result they gained in 2005, I suspect that it is not just in Germany that we may see a greater political pluralism- even if our 19th Century political system is ill equipped to cope with it.
Labels:

Comments

Newmania said…
Yes we have so much to learn about democracy from the Germans .
11:49 am
Cicero said…
Since the Germans know what happens when democracy is destroyed, I would say that they probably do have things to teach us. Fifty years after the creation of the Federal Republic and twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, German democracy has not seen fascist MEPs elected to the European Parliament, whereas- to our shame- the UK has elected 2 BNP Fascists.
3:45 pm
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Post Truth and Justice

The past decade has seen the rise of so-called "post truth" politics.  Instead of mere misrepresentation of facts to serve an argument, political figures began to put forward arguments which denied easily provable facts, and then blustered and browbeat those who pointed out the lie.  The political class was able to get away with "post truth" positions because the infrastructure that reported their activity has been suborned directly into the process. In short, the media abandoned long-cherished traditions of objectivity and began a slow slide into undeclared bias and partisanship.  The "fourth estate" was always a key piece of how democratic societies worked, since the press, and later the broadcast media could shape opinion by the way they reported on the political process. As a result there has never been a golden age of objective media, but nevertheless individual reporters acquired better or worse reputations for the quality of their reporting and ...
1 comment
Read more

Liberal Democrats v Conservatives: the battle in the blogosphere

It is probably fair to say that the advent of Nick Clegg, the new leader of the Liberal Democrats, has not been greeted with unalloyed joy by our Conservative opponents. Indeed, it would hardly be wrong to say that the past few weeks has seen some "pretty robust" debate between Conservative and Liberal Democrat bloggers. Even the Queen Mum of blogging, the generally genial Iain Dale seems to have been featuring as many stories as he can to try to show Liberal Democrats in as poor a light as possible. Neither, to be fair, has the traffic been all one way: I have "fisked' Mr. Cameron's rather half-baked proposals on health, and attacked several of the Conservative positions that have emerged from the fog of their policy making process. Most Liberal Democrats have attacked the Conservatives probably with more vigour even than the distrusted, discredited Labour government. So what lies behind this sharper debate, this emerging war in the blogosphere? Partly- in my ...
20 comments
Read more

One Year On

  Head vabariigi iseseisvuspäeva! Happy Estonian Independence Day! It is one year since I stood outside the Estonian Parliament for the traditional raising of the national flag from Tall Hermann tower. Looking at the young fraternities gathered with their flags, I was very sure that Estonia too would soon be facing the aggression of the criminal Russian regime. A tragic and dark day. 5 eyes intelligence had been clear: an all out invasion was going to happen, and Putin´s goals included- and still include- "restoration" of Russian imperial power across Europe, even to the Atlantic. Yet there was one Western intelligence failure: we all underestimated the guts of the Ukrainian armed forces, the ZSU, and its President and people. One year on, Estonia, and indeed all the front line states against Russia, knows that Ukraine saved us. Estonia used that time to prepare itself, should that "delayed" onslaught ever be unleashed, but equally the determination of Kaja Kallas, ...
Post a Comment
Read more