Thu 8 Feb 2018, 08:36 AM | Posted by editor
Angela Merkel is so desperate to establish a new ‘stable’ coalition with the SPD, that she has been forced into making more concessions than she had originally planned to the Social Democratic Party leader, Martin Schulz. The SPD, it is proposed, will have six ministries in the new government, including the key posts of Foreign Minister and Labour Minister. An SPD right-winger, Olaf Scholz, currently party leader in Hamburg, will also take over the key post of Finance Minister from Wolfgang Schäuble who has held the post for eight years.
Above all, Merkel and Schulz are anxious to get the SPD’s 460,000 members to vote in favour of a new ‘grand coalition’, so they are tarting up the agreement as much as they can. There will be, allegedly, more spending on pensions, schools and infrastructure. In a direct appeal to his party members, Schulz has even said that this new coalition will mean “an end to the diktat of austerity in Europe”.
It will be nothing of the sort, of course. In the last election, the SPD got just over 20 per cent, its lowest vote in modern times. It is currently at around 18 per cent in the polls. A new ‘grand coalition’ will mean that the SPD will take a share of the blame for all the ills facing German workers and it will face an even greater wipe-out in future elections. The extreme right-wing AfD party, which made gains in the last election in former SPD heartlands that have been de-industrialised, will make even more gains.
Neither will having an SPD Finance Minister replacing Schäuble and an SPD Foreign Minister will not make one iota of difference in the disgraceful policy of the German bankers of crucifying the living standards of Greek workers. Socialists in the SPD will be voting against the new coalition deal and will demand that the SPD follow policies in the interests of German workers, not German bankers and big business.
