The tripartite alliance returns from the holidays with a lot of noise. The Germans want growth and harmony, but a green minister distinguishes herself with a blockade.
A menage à trois is a tricky construction: love for three opens up many possibilities that the Berlin synthpop combo Stereototal already knew how to sing about. “One is tired, the other is fit, Uuuh! When it comes to love for three!” It could have been similar for the traffic light: a kind of shared leadership between the charismaless chancellor and the rhetoric professionals Lindner and Habeck. Wasn’t that famous lemon selfie downright a wicked, badly lit, sexy pic on the launch pad to daring happiness?
But, alas, the reality check: completely at odds and with an embarrassing warning from the Federal Constitutional Court, the political threesome went on vacation. You also know that from romantic life: one more holiday together, maybe things will go well then. Again nothing: Federal Family Minister Lisa Paus (Greens) lets the resolution for tax breaks burst because of the children. Even Habeck had agreed.
The green politician has probably discovered a long-sleeping bomb in a drawer: children. With children, you can do all sorts of things politically, whatever you do there hits the heart, the heart of the fathers and mothers in editorial offices, in their own ranks, in the electorate. It was foreseeable that this topic would not take place without a relationship rift.
Mood of the self-employed “gloomy”
Unfortunately, the timing is fatal. The mood in Germany is filled with lust for business like never before, i.e. a lust for a functioning economy. Everyone expects that from the former European growth engine Hardly anyone sums up the German situation over the course of time and gets everyone’s heads across as well as the British “Economist”. The magazine does it in two words, real language magic. Germany was already “the sick man of Europe”, then the “reluctant hegemon” and now again: “Is Germany the sick man of Europe again”?
Let’s ignore the identity-political question mark, whether Germany is actually a man, and concentrate on the economic: Is the man ill? The economy is shrinking, foreign countries are attracting investment, and the prospects for the self-employed, to which the columnist also belongs, have “glomerated,” the Ifo Institute is currently reporting.
The political dimension is even worse. Because the Germans behave like a Brazilian three-banded armadillo in stressful situations: they curl up. “Germany fleeing reality” is the title of the Rheingold Institute in Cologne, a current depth psychological study of the mood. Only 34 percent of citizens trusted the government, it said. 59 percent felt overwhelmed, many took refuge in coziness, looked for scapegoats, watched Netflix.
Do like the armadillo
He just doesn’t feel like politics anymore, a friend who is actually quite political, even a former party member, tells me in a weak voice. He no longer trusts any party to do anything and then wants to save himself the stress. There are more important things: family, work, entertainment. He has limited news consumption, which, as already explained here, also leads to tighter skin.
Communicative leadership could help gloss over the realities of a difficult tripartite alliance, but the chancellor prefers eloquent facts. Like American progressives, he falls for the idea that passing legislation will convince the people. It is correct: The traffic light has achieved a lot. The filling level of the gas storage tanks is already over 90 percent. As far as can be seen, the traffic light did not get a pat on the back.
Facts don’t stand a chance against arguments. Exactly when Lisa Paus threw her stink bomb, the cabinet had decided quite a few things: solar subsidies, for example, and the future financing law, a bill for municipal heat planning and a law with which the judiciary in Germany should be modernized – which sounds dull, but for the economy, that is what just stops buzzing is very important. But Paus shoots more, because the traffic lights had promised harmony before the holidays, but now they really do.
Party Tinder doesn’t help
If the doubts get strong enough in romantic relationships, one of them might fire up a dating app in a sultry moment and see what else the market has to offer. Then disillusionment quickly sets in and people prefer to buy flowers. There is currently nothing to get for the traffic light parties either: the Merz Union has been trembling at odds through the weeks, the Prime Minister of Saxony Michael Kretschmer has just canceled the Union’s NATO affiliation. He called for “calm and serenity” in the Ukraine conflict, while airstrikes killed four people in the west of the country.
Some may remember how Kretschmer once spoke to the warlord Vladimir Putin on the phone: on a plush sofa, hastily slipped to the edgelike a grandson who, at the behest of the parents, should say thank you for the sweets.
The CDU foreign politician Roderich Kiesewetter then kiesewettert the party friend together according to all the rules of the artbut no course determination has been handed down by party leader Friedrich Merz.
The sick man needs care
So maybe you prefer traffic lights? Olaf Scholz thinks in long lines and knows that everything should run smoothly again at the cabinet meeting in Meseberg. What Scholz does not take into account: The trust of the Germans has fallen again in terms of Rheingold, it will cost more to earn it back than the coalition gambled away with this nonsense.
The political trio is a first in German federal politics, if one generously ignores the CSU. Everyone should be able to shine in the coalition, this is how Scholz came up with the power architecture and thus relieved himself of leadership responsibility right from the start. The sick man of Europe needs care, but the traffic light is caught in a permanent primary race. It is understandable that the liberals, with a large proportion of conservatives, are struggling for profile and existence. They have to make noise or they will perish in 2025. However, the fact that the Greens are now rehearsing internal opposition is strategically stupid: they have already gambled away sympathy with the heating law. They would now have to present themselves as representatives of ecological and economic reason. The fact that Lisa Paus does not want to keep up this course is easy to explain: she has been largely invisible so far.
Maybe Stereo Total was right about everything. About “Love for Third” they also sing: “That’s totally out, that’s hippie shit”. Unfortunately, the Chancellor did not hear anything on this important question either.