A laboratory analysis of GLP.
Moderator between the old GLP and the new one: Jürg Grossen, shortly before his election as party president in summer 2017.
On Friday evening, the Green Liberals advanced as far as Switzerland’s Reduit, and the GLP Uri was founded in the Schluuch Bar in Altdorf. In the past three years, the GLP has only failed to win one election, the one in the canton of Uri: because it didn’t even exist there. Now the whole political map is hatched in light green.
One of the founders of the GLP Uri is Denis Aschwanden, a young man from an old CVP family whose biography reflects the decline of one party and the rise of the other. He would not have joined the CVP, the new centre. He says that “many younger people can no longer identify with the programs of the old parties”. Aschwanden runs a startup that uses wastewater from a fish farm to grow herbs and vegetables. A laboratory for new growth.
Denis Aschwanden works in a co-working space in Altdorf, he came back after studying abroad. The colleagues on the Executive Board have gone through similar paths. They want to create perspectives in politics so that those who have studied in Uri don’t migrate anymore.
Aschwanden believes that there is “nice space” for the Green Liberals in the local party landscape. What is happening in the rest of Switzerland should also happen in Uri: the Green Liberals will grow. How can this be explained?
I. The transformation of the GLP
The Green Liberals are not yet twenty years old, but they were a different party once. They were founded in Zurich in 2004 after Martin Bäumle had lost a dispute over which direction the Greens should take. In the early years, Bäumle had a strong influence on the Green Liberals, a scientist, a politician who above all calculated: “Don’t spend more than we earn” (finance), “don’t consume more than we produce” (resources).
It was a more masculine GLP than today, people from the party remember. She offered the population sustainable, liberal bills – today it is more of a socially liberal attitude towards life.
The change came in 2015, in a “mega crass” year, as several Green Liberals say: In the spring, the party lost its first popular initiative, which called for an energy instead of a VAT. 92 percent rejected them, it was devastating. In the summer, Europe hit a refugee crisis, and the political trend changed abruptly. And in the fall, the Green Liberals lost the elections, and the parliamentary group was halved.
The system had to be set up again. Founder Bäumle slowly withdrew, there was room for new staff, for new accents. Social politics gained more weight, “marriage for all” was the new big topic. Tiana Angelina Moser became parliamentary group leader and shaped European politics, in which the GLP was soon the only party that stood united behind the framework agreement.
“There was a vacancy for us in the political landscape,” says Moser, “and it’s becoming more and more vacant: the SP is moving to the left, the FDP recently to the right again. The clarity sometimes surprises even me.” National councilors like Kathrin Bertschy opened the party to the left. It was also Bertschy who opened the laboratory with others: the think tank GLP-Lab. He stands for how the Green Liberals reshaped Swiss politics not primarily in terms of content, but in terms of form.
II. The optimism of the educated
The Green Liberals hardly have any data about their members. But conversations crystallize a picture of a party base that looks something like these two people sitting in an old building in Bern on a Tuesday afternoon: a woman and a man, she in a mustard-yellow sweater, he in a white shirt, both excellent trained, she is back in Switzerland after eleven years in Madrid, Brussels and Southampton, he is a lawyer who describes himself “more as a policy person than a politics person”. They are Julie Cantalou and Ahmet Kut, the co-general secretaries of the Green Liberals.
Ahmet Kut says: “What we represent politically is not always new in detail, but before the GLP there was no structure that united these ideas.” People used to join a party because it was part of their own milieu, their own family. Kut came across the GLP while filling out his profile on the Smartvote voting support platform.
Julie Cantalou previously led the GLP’s political laboratory. She says: “The GLP-Lab was the idea of a modern party: How can we address people who don’t do the political ox tour, but perhaps want to work on individual topics on a selective or permanent basis? In the end: people like me.”
The Green Liberals are the party that has no history but a laboratory. A lot can be deduced from this. GLP is still searching, and that is part of its appeal to those who see life as a kind of academy: with compromise as science. Had she not become Secretary General, Julie Cantalou would have initiated a podcast on complexity.
The green liberals are growing wherever Switzerland is developing into a coworking country. It pours the optimism of the educated (and political newcomers) into party structures. As Julie Cantalou puts it: «Change is a fact and we want to be at the forefront of that change.» It is fearlessness from people who need not fear.
What also simplifies the success of the Green Liberals is the vagueness of the content: If it is not always clear how the party will decide, the motivation of its members to help shape these decisions increases.
The only problem is that one party constantly has to make decisions. Inevitably, optimists will also be disappointed – in autumn 2020 it was the founder of the party.
III. Selectively to the left
“I understand my party less and less. . . hurts as a founder.» Martin Bäumle’s accusation, typed into an internal chat, quickly found its way to the public. What annoyed him were two slogans that the delegates had just decided: yes to the initiative for corporate responsibility, no to the electronic ID. Bäumle warned that the economically liberal wing could visibly erode. That, loosely translated, only the G remains and the L disappears.
Bäumle is now more conciliatory. In the cantons, for example in Zurich, the mixture is still good. However, he is worried about Bern: “In the Federal Palace, our parliamentary group has slipped noticeably to the left. It is important that we do not lose out on the socially liberal profile, the economically liberal profile and a stringent financial policy. We have to stay broad.”
In fact, a lot has changed in Bern. This can be shown empirically, in the spirit of science-loving GLP. Data from Smartvote reveal how values are shifting. The questionnaires that most candidates answer during the election campaign serve as a basis – those of the GLP are particularly diligent.
Are federal tax cuts a priority for you in the next few years? 100 percent of the GLP national councilors elected in 2015 answered this question with “yes” or “rather yes”. In 2019 it was still 31 percent.
Does the state need to do more to promote equal opportunities in education? Here, too, the GLP delegation moved to the left: Approval for an expansion of the funding state rose from 29 to 88 percent.
Today it seems almost unbelievable, but in 2015 not even half of the GLP national councilors supported paid paternity leave. Four years later, 94 percent thought such a social expansion was necessary.
Old left-wing demands, such as protection against dismissal for older people or a minimum wage, are also meeting with growing approval – not yet among those elected, but among the candidates.
“So what? A few randomly selected individual questions do not give a complete picture.» GLP President Jürg Grossen is unperturbed by either Smartvote or his predecessor. The Bernese Oberlander is a contrast to the many young, urban euphorics in the GLP simply because of their origin, appearance and demeanor (moderately!).
The entrepreneur and economic politician lists all the projects from his domain that the GLP has launched together with the bourgeoisie: she was in favor of the failed Corporate Tax Reform III, she rejected an extension of the minimum wage at federal level, and she also wanted to abolish the stamp duty, what the electorate has just prevented. “And someone else wants to claim that we are not economically liberal?”
Grossen is the moderator between the old and the new GLP, but he also goes with the zeitgeist of the party. In financial policy, the Bäumle-GLP was often more rigid than the FDP. Not today. The most recent budget debate is symbolic, in which the Green Liberals wanted to spend 420 million francs more than the Federal Council, which was also not particularly frugal. Plus 33 million for humanitarian aid? Everyone in the GLP for it – except Bäumle. Plus 50 million for development cooperation? All for it – except Bäumle. Plus 300 million for international corona aid? Everyone for it – even Bäumle.
Something has actually changed in the finances, says the President. “Today we allow more in the areas that are important to us.” But first of all it’s in there. And secondly, the green liberals are still model students compared to the bourgeois.
But really, Grossen doesn’t want to justify himself. He knows the game: The left puts him in the right corner – and vice versa. “As long as they scold left and right, everything is fine.” The GLP, says its president, has been in the same place since it was founded: “We are neither left nor right. We are a progressive party with a high willingness to change at the center of the party landscape.”
Examples of this can also be found in the Smartvote questionnaires. General increase in the retirement age, for example to 67 years? 94 percent of the GLP national councilors would be there. The approval was not even in the FDP. The same applies to the full liberalization of shop opening hours or the electricity market.
IV. Even the cautious are unconcerned
The Green Liberals have changed selectively and moved towards their grown base overall. However, the basis of their success remains fragile.
Because so far the party was spoiled by the topic boom. In recent years, there have been two big, difficult issues that have dominated politics: climate and Europe. The other parties had to be happy if they could announce a consolidated position on at least one of these issues. The GLP was closed and clear on both issues.
Then came the war in Ukraine. The themes changed. But the Green Liberals increased again on Sunday in Bern. Cautious voices in the light green laboratory warn that you have to be careful. But they are not really worried either.
The Green Liberals are, perhaps initially, the party of optimism.