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| Photograph: Angela Merkel in 2012 from the European People's Party (License) (Cropped) |
On Sunday, Angela Merkel leads her party to the polls looking to secure a fourth term as Chancellor of Germany. The polls suggest that she is on course to do it.
Despite her SPD rivals taking a poll lead for the first time in six years in February, Merkel's CDU now hold a fifteen point lead. But for all the hype, she is a problematic figure for progressives.
This certainly hasn't stopped her ascent. Merkel has arguably reached the apex of her political career, in the eyes of many even taking up the mantle of the leader of the free world (courtesy in part to the abdication of that role by a certain President of the United States).
Yet if Angela Merkel's way is the medicine for instability in Europe, then it is a bitter pill for progressives. Reform has been slow under CDU governments.
Merkel was late, and reluctant, to support a vote on equal marriage. While she conceded in allowing a vote to take place, she still voted against equality - a contest that she did however lose.
And though fiscal rectitude at home has steered away from slashing taxes in pursuit of debt reduction, for pro-European progressives Merkel's way is a doubled-edged sword.
While she is held as a key pillar in keeping the European Union standing, the rise of Merkel has coincided with the decline of Social Europe - in fact wolfgang schauble, her finance minister, has been the arch-enforcer of the austerity agenda that has Greece locked in a debt-spiral and the stern opponent of leniency.
The decline of a Social Europe, with a tendency toward long-termism and cooperation, has run opposite to growing instability, growing disatisfaction with globalisation and a wedge being driven between Northern and Southern Europe - typified in Greece.
Much of that decline and these growing problems have happened under the influence of conservative parties like the CDU hiding behind the symbols and offices of the EU to project their agendas.
Yet Merkel remains above these potential controversies. Caution leads her to an inoffensive and vague centre, where easy platitudes reign and moves are made only gradually - and only when the wind is firmly seen to be blowing in a decisive direction.
That tendency can be seen in the dramatic transition for Merkel in the last few years from a cold response to a frightened young child whose family faced deportation, to the embrace of refugees - opening the doors to relieve the pressure on Southern Europe.
A turn that, with substantial political consequence, has garnered fresh respect among younger voters. Through such means have Merkel and the CDU, conservative Christian Democrats, kept just ahead of the curve.
The Election
After seven years of government by the SPD and Gerhard Schroeder came to an end in 2002, there began a widening of the groups that won representation in the Bundestag, with the share of the vote for the biggest parties falling.
The 2013 election seemed to break that trend. The falling vote share of the big two reversed and party representation dropped from to four. The CDU established for themselves a commanding place - largely at the expense of their former coalition partners, the FDP.
However, 2017 seems likely to render 2013 just a blip in a larger trend. Polling suggests the two main parties will lose ground again and as many as six parties will win seats in the Bundestag for the first time since the 1950s.
The remarkable thing is that the CDU has over time proved itself far more resilient than the SPD to this fragmentation of the vote. More remarkable still is that in this election it will be young people who keep Merkel's conservative party in power. Their support has been critical in several recent regional elections.
The Oppostion
At the head of Merkel's opposition is Sigmar Gabriel and the SPD, the Social Democrats who have for the passed four years been her coalition partners in a grand coalition between the two main parties of German politics.
At times in the last few years, particularly back in February, Gabriel and the SPD would have been forgiven for thinking their opportunity had come to return to office as the senior party. Yet the lull in support for the CDU in February did not last.
Once again, the SPD will instead enter an election looking to stem the flow of support away to third parties - a pattern seen not just in Germany but across Europe where Social Democrats have struggled to find a narrative for the times.
This election will also likely see the return to the Bundestag of Merkel's former coalition partners the FDP - her free market liberal allies whose decline prompted her to warn the Coalition partners in Britain of the likely affect of such an arrangement on the Liberal Democrats' fortunes.
The FDP have slowly recovered across regional elections since they fell below the seat threshold in 2013 and are back up to 9% in the polls. Under Germany's proportional system that could deliver around 60 seats and could mean the return of a CDU-FDP government.
For the Left, influence in the next legislative term will depend on polls translating to seats for Die Linke (The Left) and Die Grune (The Greens), one democratic socialist, the other environmentally conscious and concerned about finding a sustainable future.
The strength of the big two, and especially their grand coalition of the passed four years, tends to freeze them out of federal politics. But both parties put pressure of the SPD to move Leftwards and away from the CDU and the far-right AfD - who threaten the SPD base in much the same way as UKIP have threatened Labour in Britain.
It is perhaps testament to the centrist positioning that Merkel pursues, that there is talk that her administration may even turn to the Greens as a possible coalition partner after Sunday - with her decision to begin a nuclear phase out as a statement of credentials.
A Bitter Pill
Amidst the turmoil - the returned spectre of nuclear war, regional wars and the resultant refugee crisis, fundamentalist terrorism, the slide into authoritarianism in Eastern Europe, the return of Nationalism to the West - Angela Merkel is, understandably, seen as a fixed point.
A stable, constant, and reassuring presence. There will not be many voices that cry out loudly against the result, if she is reelected to office. It will be seen as inevitable. But there is something bitter in the triumph of conservatism amidst neverending crisis.
What the progressive heart cries out for is something, for Germany and for Europe, that can roll back the darkness. What they will accept for now is the stern, bleak but sturdy breakwater.
References
Alberto Nardelli & Tobias Schmutzler's 'Generation Merkel: Young voters have helped make Angela Merkel the clear frontrunner to win a fourth term on Sunday. It's all thanks to her handling of the refugee crisis'; on BuzzFeed; 20 September 2017.
Jefferson Chase's 'German election: What you need to know about Angela Merkel's CDU - The CDU is not only Germany's leading party presently. It's also an institution that's very much the product of history. But has the CDU moved so far to the center that it's no longer truly conservative?'; from DW; 14 September 2017.
Cynthia Kroet's 'Angela Merkel is conservative candidate for chancellor: Social Democrats ahead of CDU for first time in 6 years, poll shows - Angela Merkel was on Monday picked as the official candidate of the Christian Democrats for Germany’s September 24 election'; in Politico; 6 February 2017.
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