2024-03-01 13:40:48
Social democracy in Europe is at a crossroads. This is what two British professors claim. They identified the German Chancellor as a warning example.
Politics doesn’t have it easy in times of multiple crises. While the war in Ukraine, recession and climate change keep Europe on tenterhooks, the governments of the nation states are trying, more or less successfully, to defend themselves against the injustices of the present. Whether it’s a weakening economy, social unrest or Vladimir Putin – once one fire has been extinguished, the next one is already blazing, and usually they all smolder at the same time.
In view of this, Olaf Scholz is waiting and will explain himself when he sees the time has come. As with his refusal to supply Ukraine with urgently needed Taurus cruise missiles. Scholz is the opposite of the “Basta” chancellor; he has hardly ever spoken a word of power in his notoriously divisive coalition. “We argue like tinkers,” said Agriculture Minister Cem Özdemir to the “Rheinische Post” with a view to the traffic lights. And that has been the case for more than two years.
Two British authors are now putting forward this thesis that the social democrat Scholz’s style of government could be based not on political calculation, but rather on a lack of policy-making competence. In an essay for the British Guardian, Tarik Abou-Chadi and Tom O’Grady reflect on the future of social democracy in general and in Germany and England in particular.
Scholz a “naturally cautious technocrat”
Labor leader Keir Starmer wants to take power there after the coming general elections. The chances of this happening are not bad, as the British are very disillusioned after Brexit, a persistent economic crisis and thirteen years of Tory government. According to a survey, 49 percent of Brits were satisfied with the work of the Labor Party in January, while only 27 percent were satisfied with the performance of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s ruling Tories.
So the majority of the country is pretty fed up with the Conservatives, and Starmer doesn’t really have to do much more than avoid making any major mistakes until October. But what then?
Abou-Chadi and O’Grady use the example of the German traffic light to show how not to do this after a change of power from a bourgeois-conservative to a liberal-Social Democratic government. “If you want to know what Britain’s future looks like under Starmer, you should look to Germany – the prospects are not rosy,” is the title of her essay, loosely translated. They give the government in Berlin a damning report, especially the Federal Chancellor.
They describe Scholz as a “naturally cautious technocrat” who suddenly found himself in a country that had lost its way. As a politician who throws his political goals overboard just to ensure the black zero, i.e. a balanced national budget. “More than two years after he took office, the government appears to be without direction and without any vision for the future,” say the authors. The political right is now increasingly stepping into this gap. The Social Democrats, on the other hand, are “running straight into defeat.”
Overdue reforms would be delayed
Abou-Chadi and O’Grady work as professors of political science at the elite University of Oxford and at the elite University College of London (UCL). They make no secret of their sympathy for center-left parties. Abou-Chadi writes at X that he is worried about “the transformative power of the political left” and the increasing social influence of right-wing parties.
In order to stop this development, strong political programs and assertive actors are needed. However, he and O’Grady don’t see any of this in Scholz or in his British counterpart Keir Starmer. Former SPD chancellor candidate Peer Steinbrück also recently attested to Scholz’s certain “lack of leadership and orientation.”