Yes, yes, it’s an exaggerated headline (I’m unconvinced that a German government crisis is exactly clickbait, maybe “misinformation” will have to do), but Germany is headed for an early election.
There are a number of underlying causes for this (apart from the fact that the free market(ish) FDP was never a natural fit in a governing coalition made up of the left-of-center SDP and the Greens). But at the bottom lurk the increasing problems dragging the German economy down. In no small part, these can be put down, one way or another, to the climate policies pursued by Angela Merkel and her successor Olaf Scholz.
Germany’s fragile government has collapsed after Olaf Scholz fired his finance minister on Wednesday evening.
The Chancellor sacked Christian Lindner after days of crisis talks and amid a deluge of rumours that his turbulent coalition was about to come to an end.
In a statement to the press on Wednesday evening, the chancellor accused his finance minister of “breaking his trust” and putting the “short-term survival of his party over the wellbeing of the country.”
Mr Scholz, 66, said that he would put his chancellorship to a vote of confidence in January, a move that will clear the way for early elections in March.
Mr Lindner, head of the pro-business Free Democrats, had been pushing for corporate tax relief and a delay to net zero targets as part of a comprehensive package to get the economy moving after years of stagnation.
Lindner and Scholz have been swapping insults. But the economy’s woes are real enough and likely to get worse as deindustrialization grinds on. That’s been a fairly steady process, chronic rather than acute, but Germany’s critical auto sector is clearly now entering extremely treacherous territory. This is due, in no small respect, to the effects of the EU’s coerced transfer to EVs.
The Daily Telegraph:
Mr Lindner hit back in a statement made shortly after in which he accused Mr Scholz of “not having the strength to give our country a new start.”
He added that the Chancellor had tried to get him to suspend the country’s strict debt brake rules, something he refused to accept.
At the end of last week, Mr Lindner set out his conditions for staying in the government in an internal paper that called for an “economic transformation”.
Among the measures were a demand to cut the corporate tax level, freeze all new business regulations and push back the target of achieving net zero by five years.
The paper was immediately rejected by Mr Scholz’s Social Democrats and the Greens, the third party in the coalition.
Of course it was.
The Scholz government is the government that, despite the war in Ukraine, shut down the last of Germany’s nuclear-power stations.
Reacting to the news of the coalition’s collapse, Elon Musk commented that “Olaf ist ein Narr.”
This was undiplomatic and a little harsh. Let’s just say that Scholz lacks the talent or the ideas to extricate Germany or his government from a terrible political and economic mess, a mess for which he is in part responsible. Scholz is also discovering something that may well come to dominate the politics of the second half of this decade. When the real cost of net zero becomes apparent, there is likely to be an upheaval.
Net zero or stay in office: Choose one.
Yes, yes, but what does Narr mean?
Fool.
Oh.