German Liberals Provide Hope for the Liberal Democrats
It hasn’t been a good time of late for the Liberal Democrats. Our sister party in Germany, the Free Democratic Party, hasn’t had it easy either. Liberal Democrats faced the ignominy of losing to a six-foot intergalactic penguin in Edinburgh and the FDP lost to a bunch of Pirates in Berlin. We both suffer the challenges of being a junior coalition partner.
Nonetheless, their recent showing in the regional election in Schleswig-Holstein has confounded the critics. Widely tipped to fail to reach the necessary parliamentary threshold, they managed to secure a respectable 8.2% after a succession of poor results (Der Spiegel has more).
Interestingly for British Liberal Democrats, the FDP have embarked on a more confrontational approach with their CDU-CSU coalition partners. As one newspaper reported, their parliamentary group leader recently remarked that they had “successfully fought traces of “Social Democratization” among the conservatives”. Sounds like a great guy!
Lib Dems should monitor their strategy with interest. It is not too late to reverse our fortunes. We too can confound the polls and critics.
Tags: Free Democrats, Liberal Democrats, Philipp Rosler, Rainer Brüderle