{"id":807,"date":"2005-09-19T15:01:00","date_gmt":"2005-09-19T15:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jcm.org.uk\/blog\/2005\/09\/19\/german-elections-it-could-be-weeks\/"},"modified":"2005-09-19T15:01:00","modified_gmt":"2005-09-19T15:01:00","slug":"german-elections-it-could-be-weeks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/2005\/09\/german-elections-it-could-be-weeks\/","title":{"rendered":"German elections: it could be weeks"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Beeb, as ever, has a load of good info<\/a>, including the wonderful bit “Mr Schroeder said he could not understand how the CDU ‘stakes a claim to political leadership from a disastrous election result'” – because, erm… they beat you by 1% and yet you’re still claiming power? Nice one, Gerdy…<\/p>\n

Meanwhile Ostracised from \u00ef\u00bf\u00bdsterreich looks at some potential coalitions<\/a> after liveblogging yesterday’s results<\/a>, while North Sea Diaries<\/a> points out that, despite the scare stories about the German economy and unemployment, comparisons to 1970s Britain (and thus Merkel to Thatcher) are not as accurate as many believe.<\/p>\n

Medienkritik has the German electoral map<\/a> – showing a rather hefty north\/south, east\/west divide. He’s also provided a similar map of unemployment figures, hinting at a correlation, as well as a bit more coalition speculation<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Over at Bildt Comments, in Berlin everything’s unclear except the weather<\/a> – the only thing that’s certain is that “there are distinctly more losers than winners” – and the Dresden election in two weeks could end up decisive. Possibly. Depending on everything else that happens. Perhaps.<\/p>\n

Whether or not this result is as bad as some seem to think (sections of the German press apparently calling it “fatal”<\/a>) it’s simply too early to say. But if even the German press don’t know what to make of it<\/a>, you can be sure that anything you read in the English language press will be even less helpful – not least thanks to the animosity with Britain and America that Schr\u00ef\u00bf\u00bdder’s managed to build up over the last few years (and that Merkel could, lazily, be mistaken for a Neocon).<\/p>\n

Expect a load of punditry on potential German governments in the European press over the next couple of weeks, in other words. Most of it more or less ill-informed, all of it highly speculative and based in little in the way of knowledge or fact.<\/p>\n

Update:<\/b> Hysteria from the Commission<\/a>. Well, not hysteria, exactly, but can’t we just let the Germans sort out their problems for themselves? It’s not like they actually WANT a political deadlock. Well, except for the fact that that’s what they voted for…<\/p>\n

(Oh, and can someone tell Mandelson to shut up about “social models”? Whenever I hear that phrase I think of those little postcard adverts you get in the phone boxes around Soho. As such, a “new social model” appears to feel quite nice for a bit but then leave you feeling ripped off, broke and dosed up on clap. Not that I’d know, obviously…)<\/p>\n

By the by, this should be read if you want to know what’s going on<\/a> – a nice overview with good analysis, and even a few nuggets along the lines of “the F.D.P. served chicken wings in their car park”. Can’t be bad.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Beeb, as ever, has a load of good info, including the wonderful bit “Mr Schroeder said he could not understand how the CDU ‘stakes a claim to political leadership from a disastrous election result’” – because, erm… they beat … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-807","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/807","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=807"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/807\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}