Dhe FDP is on the way – the only question is where to go. If you believe the election results, then things are going down steeply. On Sunday, the Liberals massively lost votes in an important election for the fifth time in a row: In Berlin, their candidate clearly missed entering the House of Representatives. Is that, like on the roller coaster, just the valley from which it will soon be going uphill with momentum?
That’s roughly how the party leader and Federal Finance Minister Christian Lindner described the prospects of the Liberals at a press conference in Berlin on Monday. “We are pursuing a clear strategy that has not yet paid off – but we are sticking to it.” Lindner sounded serious, not defiant – but also quite helpless. Because the valley has long since stretched to a low plain.
That has a lot to do with the role of the FDP in the federal government. There she does not show the assertiveness that her followers expect of her. So it was obvious that Lindner on Monday, after he had analyzed the “very clear” numbers “very soberly”, derived three “conclusions for the traffic lights” from the Berlin fiasco.
That could be understood as a declaration of war: SPD and Greens should expect that the FDP will now make their points more clearly.
According to Lindner, the most important are, first, that a “policy against the car” is not in the interest of the people. Secondly, that a good migration policy not only includes cosmopolitanism, but also the fight against irregular migration. Thirdly, the citizens wanted economic success, more entrepreneurial freedom, less bureaucracy and fewer taxes. The Germans then demanded that this be the signal for the Berlin elections.
The FDP appears as a preventer of worse
No wonder that Lindner set these accents – after his party in Berlin lost votes to the CDU in particular, as well as to non-voters. At the end of the election campaign on Friday, he had set other priorities, for example on the subject of migration policy. He had pointed out – “friendly greetings to the CDU” – that the values of our society were not “Hans as a first name and a special fondness for sauerkraut” and, with a view to the riots in Berlin on New Year’s Eve, emphasized that the The victims of the riots were also the migrant owners of kebab shops and late night snack bars. Politicians from the SPD or the Greens could have said something similar.
But while it is favorable for the traffic light government that the three partners agree on some issues – it is unfavorable for the FDP in election campaigns. On the other hand, it does not succeed in setting itself apart from the competition as strongly as its sympathizers demand. They often see it as a defeat, which is not a victory across the board – for example the compromise on the nuclear power plants, which they are actually proud of at party headquarters because the FDP pushed something through against the will of the coalition partners. But not far enough, complain disappointed supporters.
The Liberals are still practicing what the Greens have been doing for a long time: letting the members and activists swallow the fattest toad, pointing out that it’s organic after all. However, this is also the result of extremely patient communication on both sides.
Another problem facing the FDP in the traffic light is that it sometimes acts primarily as a preventer of worse things, as a “guarantor of a middle-of-the-road policy,” as Lindner put it on Monday. This raises the question of why one shouldn’t vote for larger parties that could promise even more centrism, such as the CDU – as happened in Berlin.
There is also this tendency in the federal government: If there were federal elections next Sunday, according to all surveys, the Union would do significantly better than in 2021, the FDP significantly worse. Lindner countered on Monday that his party not only kept the traffic lights on course, but that the three partners governed quite well together. In addition, the FDP is pursuing a series of projects to modernize and reduce bureaucracy in Germany, with which the party wants to advertise itself as a “creative force” in the future.
What will be decisive, however, is how she does it. Because their politicians have been saying that they are doing it ever since they have been in government. Lindner himself took the view on Monday that constant dripping wears away the stone. The deputy party chairman Wolfgang Kubicki, on the other hand, sees no need for action by Lindner himself, but by the parliamentary group. Lindner should “continue as party leader and finance minister just as before,” he told the FAZ, but the parliamentary group must do more to “highlight the brand essence” of the FDP. “Our voters expect us to be more willing to engage in tough debates.”
#election #debacle #FDP #assert #strongly #federal #government