Knives out for the CDU
This newsletter is a six-minute read
Dear reader,
It’s been a really busy few days for news. So without further ado…
Regards
Jörg & Axel
Five Things
The Robert Koch Institute has published a dramatic prognosis for the scale of the pandemic in the second week of April. The disease control agency says that the “British variant” is taking over so rapidly that a new wave of cases is on the way. While public discourse is still centred around ending restrictions, the RKI predicts that within weeks we will have more cases than in late December. Specifically, around 40,000 new cases a day by April 12th.
Health Minister Jens Spahn announced the temporary suspension of the AstraZeneca Covid vaccine on Monday. While the Health Minister stressed that the move was “purely precautionary” it is likely to have a fatal effect on public trust in a vaccine many Germans already felt queasy about. The suspension came on the advice of the German vaccine agency, which has found seven cases of blood clots in people who’ve had the jab. While tiny in comparison with the 1.6 million Germans vaccinated with AstraZeneca, this number is still higher than what one would expect, Mr Spahn said. Following Denmark’s lead, seven European countries have now suspended use of the vaccine. Whatever the European Medicines Agency now decides, public trust can probably never be completely rebuilt.
On the subject of damaged public trust, CCTV footage was leaked to the media last week which showed a paramedic running up to and punching a man who was tied to a stretcher in the town of Kassel. The man had been arrested at a refugee centre for acting drunkenly and aggressively. According to the police report, he spat at the medics when he was taken away. That in no way excuses what happened afterwards - the punch fractured the man’s cheekbone while disinterested police officers stood and watched. One can only conclude that the police knew what was about to happen - and didn’t care. Germany’s cops have been fighting off claims of institutional racism. Images of the man’s beaten up face are being shared by refugees on social media - what are they to think about officers of the law who believe in dishing out arbitrary justice?
It sounds like the script to a bad film. A young newspaper editor elbows his way to he top of the tree by playing fast and loose with the facts. Once there, he develops a cocaine habit, flies into irrational rages with unlucky copy-editors and hires young female journalists based on their readiness to jump into bed with him. Those are the accusations published in der Spiegel about Julian Reichelt, the 40-year-old Editor-in Chief of Bild. What is known for sure is that Mr Reichelt has stepped down from his job at the country’s biggest-selling newspaper pending the results of an internal inquiry. But he has also announced that he’s suing Spiegel. There is certainly no love lost between Spiegel and Bild, mortal enemies divided by a love of sensational headlines. But other newspapers have also alluded to sexual harassment claims against the Bild boss, who has often revelled in his reputation as Germany’s most loathed man.
This summer Tesla will open the gates to its Brandenburg giga factory. A declaration of war against Volkswagen, whose Wolfsburg headquarters and Stammwerk are so close that Elon Musk won’t even have to stop and charge when he drives westward to visit his friend and rival, Volkswagen CEO Herbert Driess. VW is not sitting idle. Bar Tesla, no other automaker has electric ambitions of Volkswagen’s scale. By 2030 the world’s largest car manufacturer wants seven out of eight cars leaving its plants (currently that’s about 10 million a year) to be of the chargeable kind. Control over battery production is key to maintaining an edge in the brave new world of electric vehicles, as that's where the profit margins will lie. This Monday, Volkswagen announced an audacious plan to build no fewer than six battery factories across Europe before 2030. “Electric mobility is now our core business,” said Mr Diess. Now the ball is in Elon’s court. Tesla is expected to apply for a permit to build the world’s largest battery factory next to the automotive plant in Brandenburg. Regardless of who wins, Germans have reason to rejoice that the investment war in one of the worlds largest industries is being played out on their turf.
Knives out for the CDU
The first elections of Germany’s Superwahljahr took place on Sunday and - as predicted - the CDU woke up with a panful headache the next day.
Historic defeats in what was once their backyard led to talk of turmoil and crisis in the conservative ranks.
What will worry the CDU top brass most is that it wasn’t just the left-wing press crowing about their humiliation - conservative journalists also spent Sunday night sharpening their kitchen cutlery. Most remarkably, right-wing Die Welt called for a new federal government without the CDU, saying the party had fallen into stagnation.
While the German press had a field day dreaming up new coalition options at the federal level, we don’t want to get too far ahead of ourselves. Success for the hapless Social Democrats in Rhineland-Palatinate shows that provincial politics can still behave in peculiar ways.
The CDU ‘in crisis’
The Christian Democrats ruled for 58 years straight in Baden-Württemberg - often with absolute majorities, before protests in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011 unexpectedly swept the Greens into power.
What the CDU hoped was a blip has become the new normal.
They’ve lost two straight elections to the Greens, and there’s a fair chance that they’ll now be booted out as junior coalition partners to make way for a ‘traffic light’ coalition of Greens, the liberal Free Democrats (yellow), and Social Democrats (red).
The CDU results weren’t quite as bad in Rhineland-Pfalz, where they still count almost every third vote as theirs. But they dropped four percentage points on the 2016 election. The absolute majorities Helmut Kohl there in the 1970s are a distant dream.
The bottom line: in both states the CDU scored their worst results ever.
In their defence, they were up against two popular incumbents, Malu Dreyer (SPD) in Rheinland-Pfalz and Winfried Kretschmann (Greens) in Baden-Württemberg.
But neck-and-neck polling figures as recently as February show that victory was there for the taking in both states.
In the end, the CDU’s poor handling of the pandemic, disguised for a long time by relatively low death rates, caught up with them. Slow vaccine rollouts and un-coordinated testing programmes have been dominating the headlines.
And then here was the scandal over CDU politicians getting rich on medical mask sales…
The party is surely aware that things could unravel quickly from here. There is a power vacuum at the top, where new chairman Armin Laschet still has to assert himself in a power struggle with Bavarian state leader Markus Söder for the role of Chancellor candidate.
Mr Söder’s response on Monday left little to the imagination: “The elections yesterday were a heavy blow to the heart of the CDU. It showed that people play an important role in elections.”
We all know who Mr Söder thinks is a big enough person to win at the federal level.
The result also laid bare the level of loathing many conservatives hold for the modern CDU. The leader article in Die Welt on Monday was a thinly disguised rallying cry for an end to the CDU era.
“The CDU/CSU as permanent occupant of the chancellery, because it has almost always been so and has never really hurt most people - this state of affairs is over, even for Germans in the political centre. New times are dawning for the CDU and CSU. Harder ones.
The overwhelming number of “thumbs up” the article was given online, show just how grave the situation is.
The Greens luxury problem
Winfried Kretschmann is Europe’s - and possibly the world’s - most successful Green politician. The 72-year old leader in Baden-Württemberg won yet another election and even improved on his vote share from 2016. While the Green leadership in Berlin are basking in his glory, questions remain over just how Green Mr Kretschmann really is.
His support for subsidising combustion engines, and an outburst in 2018 about criminal refugees being “male hordes that should be banished to the countryside” are anathema to the party’s left-wing base. But voters seem to want to have their cake and eat it too (jobs and environmentalism), so the party central will now be under pressure to follow the Kretschmann formula and cosy up to business.
But, compared to the woes of the CDU and the SPD, this is a luxury problem. There’s no way around the fact that the Greens were the big winners. They almost doubled their results in Rhineland-Pfalz (and won big at municipal elections in Hesse).
Mr Kretschmann has previously scoffed at the federal leadership's chancellorship ambitions. In August he told his colleagues to “stop dreaming”. Polling at 20 percent they’re still ten percentage points behind the CDU - the ten percent that the CDU have lost since the summer have been evenly distributed among the other parties.
Yet if the trend continues, a “traffic light” coalition at the federal level, with a Green BundeskanzlerIn, no longer sounds so crazy. Mr Kretschmann himself may well form such a government in Baden-Württemberg. As many differences as the Greens, SPD and FDP have, they have one thing in common - they all want to see the CDU in the opposition.
But who would be the Green Bundeskanzler? Aged 51 and with government experience in Schleswig Holstein, Robert Habeck is a more obvious choice than the younger Annalena Baerbock. But, as all other candidates will be male, would a party that prides itself on its feminist credentials dare to send another man into the race?
The AfD - here to stay
One way of looking at the AfD’s night is that they were the biggest losers. They shed a third of their voters from 2016 in both states.
But the party was never going to hold onto the spectacular vote shares they won in both states at the height of the refugee crisis. That they still hover around the 10 percent mark is a sign that their core nativist brand - keeping Germany German - still cuts through for a section of the the populus during these unusual times.
Schadenfreude in the SPD
Malu Dreyer of the SPD lost a fraction of a percent versus the last election but still saw the second placed CDU fade into the distance.
A winning Social Democrat is a sight for sore eyes these days. Dreyer probably thanks her lucky stars that never ran for the party leadership in 2019 - she’s more than twice as popular as the federal party.
Given his own poor polling figures, SPD Chancellor candidate Olaf Scholz should have little to smile about - hence the big grin on his face as he was interviewed by ZDF after the election was pure Schadenfreude a the CDU’s misery.
Apart from die Linke, whose new party leadership hasn’t struck a chord with voters, and the AfD, whom no other party will touch - coalitions involving every other party now seem possible.
What will be a very nervous ride for Mr Laschet and the CDU could make for a highly entertaining election campaign.
J.L. & A.B.B.
Who we are:
Jörg Luyken: Journalist based in Berlin since 2014. His work has been published by German and English outlets including der Spiegel, die Welt, the Daily Telegraph. Formerly in the Middle East. Classicist; Masters in International Politics & Arabic from St Andrews.
Axel Bard Bringéus: Started his career as a journalist for the leading Swedish daily Svenska Dagbladet and has spent the last decade in senior roles at Spotify and as a venture capital investor. In Berlin since 2011.