Herr Misery Guts and the German election

Germany, the EU's largest and most influential nation, goes to the polls next month in a general election where most commentators expect Angela Merkel and her conservatives (CDU) to be returned to power. Merkel has grown in stature as a German and European stateswoman and her policies are supported by about 38% of the electorate.

Frank Steinmeier, who is the Social Democrat leader, is perceived as completely characterless and a misery guts. Does this remind you of anyone? His party is sliding down the polls and commentators are drawing parallels with the UK Labour Party. His party is fractured with the left wanting to join up in a coaliton with Die Linke, the Left Party, which consists of former Social Democrats and the former Communist Party (PDS) of East Germany. The Right, led by Steinmeier, are against this but are facing electoral humiliation. Opinion polls suggest that they will be lucky to get 20% of the vote. Steinmeier is Germany's Foreign Minister but never really held a major political post before and is regarded as a dull political apparachik who worked closely for former Social Democrat Chancellor, Gerhard Schroder, and was promoted for his loyalty. The German press are commenting that the Social Democrat party may be finished as an electoral force. It will be interesting to see how the Left in Germany will reconfigure after this election.

Meanwhile Steinmeier and the Social Democrats are being accused of stealing the clothes of the Greens in this election. Their manifesto includes a recently unveiled plan to create four million new jobs in Germany by the end of the next decade by investing in green-energy projects and retraining the unemployed to look after the country's increasingly elderly population. Nobody doubts that the plan is a good one. But the trouble is that Mr Steinmeier has been unable to convince voters that his idea is realistic. The polls suggest that only 13 per cent of voters believe him.

The German election is not without its joke figures, as indeed were the recent EU elections in the UK with the Jury List etc. Germany's latest candidate for chancellor has ferocious buck teeth, wants to make the bunny rather than the eagle the country's national symbol and has tried to copy President Obama with his campaign slogan: "Yes Weekend".

The grotesque joke figure of Horst Schlammer, played by the comedian Hape Kerkeling, is the newest addition to the German political scene and he has succeeded in livening up one of the dullest elections on record.
His satirical film Isch kandidiere (I am a candidate) goes on general release throughout Germany this week and is almost certain to be a box office hit. One in five Germans have said they would consider voting for him if his name were ever to appear on a ballot paper.

Mr Schlammer, is a Teutonic version of Sasha Baron Cohen's Borat. He sports a dirty brown raincoat, moustache and thick glasses and his clothes are normally covered with bits of food. He claims to be the deputy editor of a provincial German newspaper and recently set up his mock HSP (Horst Schlammer Party) to fight the general election. His manifesto pledges state-funded sun loungers and cosmetic surgery for all.
Mr Schlammer describes his party as "conservative, liberal, left-wing and a bit ecological". Asked about burning issues such as the financial crisis, he is disarmingly honest: "I have no solution," he admits. Swine flu? "I'm against it."

The satire coincides with another joke election campaign waged by "The Party" which says it wants to rebuild the Berlin Wall and banish pensioners to the former Communist east.

It seems that anti-politics and disillusionment with the managerialism of much current politics is alive and well in Germany also. Those looking for something different must seek out the Greens and Die Linke. But with the Germany economy apparently recovering and Merkel riding high in the polls it looks like several more years of business as usual. Perhaps Steinmeier and the SPD can issue a grim warning to New Labour about how not to proceed.