Sometimes silence can be very loud. For example, when FDP leader Christian Lindner decided on the evening of the Berlin election not to give any interviews. It was already becoming apparent that the FDP would fail at the five percent hurdle. Rather than take to the stage and address his party, he made his way to the bar and ordered a non-alcoholic beer.
What was he supposed to say? Another electoral defeat, the fifth in a row. The FDP is thrown out of a state parliament for the second time in four months. It was only in October that it failed to pass the five percent hurdle in the state elections in Lower Saxony. Lindner is slowly running out of explanations for this.
The night has apparently brought no new insights. When he appeared in front of the cameras on Monday afternoon, he said that one had to “analyze soberly” that the FDP had lost voters to the CDU and non-voters. Berlin’s top candidate Sebastian Czaja is not to blame, but it doesn’t help that the FDP in Berlin campaigned against the left-wing alliance of SPD, Greens and Left and had to form a coalition with the SPD and Greens.
There is no new strategy
From the point of view of the party leadership, the reasons for the failure have hardly changed since the lost state elections in North Rhine-Westphalia in May last year. The FDP supporters feel uncomfortable in the traffic light coalition at the federal level, and the FDP hardly manages to communicate its successes. That is set to change, and the party has been working on raising its profile for months. So far, apparently little of this has reached the population.
Because there is no new strategy to announce, Lindner repeats the old one. “As a federal party, we already adjusted our course a few months ago,” he says. They want to stick to that, although it “hasn’t paid off yet” in the Berlin elections.
Lindner says that the successful government work with the SPD and Greens should be emphasized more in the future, at the same time the FDP should become more recognizable as a middle-class party. “If the FDP can show their handwriting, then of course that also improves the general conditions in state elections,” says Lindner.
The problem: The FDP is divided into at least two camps. Those who see the traffic light alliance as an opportunity who can gain something from this social-green-liberal coalition. And those who only entered the alliance out of state political responsibility because the Union did not seem capable of governing at federal level after its devastating election results in September 2021. They understand the traffic light as evil, which is currently without alternative, but does not bring the FDP approval. “The traffic light keeps pulling us down,” says FDP MP Frank Schäffler, for example.
The latter includes deputy party leader Wolfang Kubicki, who has long argued that the FDP is showing too much consideration for its coalition partners. Now it’s over with the “appeasement policy in the traffic light coalition,” he said on the evening of the election. “Robert can lie down there chopped up,” he added in the morning in “Spiegel”, meaning Economics Minister Robert Habeck from the Greens. If the Greens did not agree to the accelerated planning of roads, then no new power lines would be built.
One who sees the chances of the traffic light is Vice-Chairman Gyde Jensen. The country needs “the committed, the climbers,” she says the day after the election. “Our test question must always be whether we make our job as FDP in the traffic light credible for all of them,” she demands. In other words: Less self-employment, more government work.
Johannes Vogel, vice chairman of the party, also belongs to the first group. In a remarkable Tagesthemen interview in the fall, he said that the FDP had to make it clear that it was “not against things”, “but above all a pro-party”. An announcement to those who publicly doubted the traffic light alliance.
The conflict is not resolved
The conflict between the camps is not resolved, it runs through the party leadership. “I have the impression that some in the parliamentary group have not yet realized how great the government’s responsibility for the country is,” says Harald Christ, former Federal Treasurer of the FDP. “You have to decide: Do you stand by this traffic light coalition? Or do you want to be an opposition in government? You can’t score on both sides at the same time,” he says.
After the electoral defeats last year, the tone in the traffic light government had become increasingly intensified, most clearly after the lost state elections in Schleswig-Holstein and North Rhine-Westphalia in May last year, in which the FDP lost more than five percentage points.
Do you stand by this traffic light coalition? Or do you want to be an opposition in government? You cannot score on both sides at the same time.
Harold Christianformer Federal Treasurer of the FDP
Shortly thereafter, the dispute in the coalition about the gas levy and the extension of the lifetime of the nuclear power plants followed. After the election debacle in Lower Saxony, parliamentarian Schäffler called the traffic light a “millstone” hanging around the neck of the FDP. It was a dramatic picture.
Now the sound should probably be less shrill. But the FDP wants to stay sharp on the matter. At the press conference at noon, Lindner said that the CDU’s electoral success in Berlin showed that people didn’t want to do without their cars. He was alluding to the next major conflict at the federal level: the acceleration of planning. The FDP also wants to grant road projects an “overriding public interest”, which would largely undermine nature conservation for these projects. The Greens are strictly against it.
It’s a good time for the FDP to make a name for itself as a car party again. After all, the entire party can agree on this, and the Greens are also the main opponents, which is also easier for most FDP members than arguing against the Union, which many still feel closer to than the traffic light coalition partners.
However, they are not giving up the role of the opposition in waiting. On the contrary. The clashes in the traffic light coalition are likely to get tougher again in the coming weeks.
To home page
