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Merkel gets her 'dream coalition' as Social Democrat vote collapses
Tony Paterson, The Independent
A triumphant Chancellor Angela Merkel swept to victory in yesterday's German general election and will form a new coalition government with the Free Democrats that is expected to cut taxes and put Europe's largest economy on a more pro-business course.

The result brings an end to Ms Merkel's unwieldy "grand coalition" with the Social Democrats and ushers in a new administration committed to economic reform and to axing plans to phase out nuclear power by 2021.

The outcome was a personal victory for the 55-year-old Chancellor but a major disappointment for her Christian Democrat party which won only 33.8 per cent of the vote – its second worst result in six decades...
(28 Sept 2009)

Europe’s Socialists Suffering Even in Downturn
Steven Erlanger, New York Times
A specter is haunting Europe — the specter of Socialism’s slow collapse.

Even in the midst of one of the greatest challenges to capitalism in 75 years, involving a breakdown of the financial system due to “irrational exuberance,” greed and the weakness of regulatory systems, European Socialist parties and their left-wing cousins have not found a compelling response, let alone taken advantage of the right’s failures.

German voters clobbered the Social Democratic Party on Sunday, giving it only 23 percent of the vote, its worst performance since World War II.

Voters also punished left-leaning candidates in the summer’s European Parliament elections and trounced French Socialists in 2007. Where the left holds power, as in Spain and Britain, it is under attack. Where it is out, as in France, Italy and now Germany, it is divided and listless...

Europe’s center-right parties have embraced many ideas of the left: generous welfare benefits, nationalized health care, sharp restrictions on carbon emissions, the ceding of some sovereignty to the European Union. But they have won votes by promising to deliver more efficiently than the left, while working to lower taxes, improve financial regulation, and grapple with aging populations.

Europe’s conservatives, says Michel Winock, a historian at the Paris Institut d’Études Politiques, “have adapted themselves to modernity.” When Nicolas Sarkozy of France and Germany’s Angela Merkel condemn the excesses of the “Anglo-Saxon model” of capitalism while praising the protective power of the state, they are using Socialist ideas that have become mainstream, he said.

It is not that the left is irrelevant — it often represents the only viable opposition to established governments, and so benefits, as in the United States, from the normal cycle of electoral politics...
(28 Sept 2009)

The UK is due for an election next year which the Conservatives look destined to win. A selection of media interviews with voters after the recent Local & European elections could be summed up by the phrase "its time for a change". It therefore looks like none of the mainstream parties is actually capturing the imagination of voters, it is just that things aren't going well so why not have a change. I'm not sure that this could be described as the death of Socialism, especially as the current party of the left, Labour, has separated from its Socialist roots. - SO

Angela Merkel win ends Turkey's EU hopes
Damien McElroy, The Daily Telegraph
Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU) and the Free Democrats (FDP) are both hostile to the accession of the overwhelmingly Muslim country of 71 million.

The CDU is against the Turks joining for cultural reasons while the FDP leader, and probable new foreign minister, Guido Westerwelle has said the country's economy is too far below European standards to integrate comfortably with other members. With almost three million ethnic Turks living in Germany, many as citizens, Germany also fears there would be a flood of immigrants after Turkish accession...

The Turkish reaction to the German election result has been open dismay. The country's liberal broadsheet Milliyet summed up the mood in Ankara's political circles. It said: "Turkey is the loser"...
(29 Sept 2009)

Nuclear power? Yes, maybe
The Economist
REFLECTING the morning sun like a lake of black ice, the solar panels in the wild forests of Brandenburg’s border with Poland offer a glimpse of a German dream of a future built on clean energy. Here, at Lieberose, the world’s second-largest photovoltaic power plant captures morning light to produce enough electricity for a town of about 15,000 homes. Gleaming rows of solar cells like these, lazily turning windmills and other renewable sources already provide about 15% of Germany’s electricity, making the country a leader in both wind and solar technology.

But impressive as such achievements have been, Germany faces contentious energy choices, and none more so than over the future of 17 nuclear power plants, some aged and prone to breakdowns, that provide almost a quarter of the country’s electricity. Their fate has been one of the few emotive issues in the campaign for federal election on September 27th.

In 2000 a previous coalition of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and Greens decided to ban construction of new nuclear power plants and gradually to phase out existing ones by 2022. That may all change soon if the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), led by the chancellor, Angela Merkel, is able to form a government with the liberal Free Democrats (FDP). Ms Merkel has pledged to extend the lives of some nuclear plants by up to 15 years; the FDP is keen to build new reactors...
(10 Sept 2009)