The FDP does not want to blow up the traffic lights. At least not now. Its lack of reliability will end up harming itself.
FDP conference: disputes with traffic lights Photo: Liesa Johannssen/rtr
Does Christian Lindner still want traffic lights? Is he getting ready to leave? After the FDP conference, it seems as if the FDP wants to catapult itself into the focus of public interest mainly through noise and strident demands. Everything is clear: Christian Lindner does not want to blow up the coalition. The debris would probably also bury the FDP's clear chances of remaining politically relevant.
2024 is not 1982. At that time, the liberals moved from the SPD to the Union and remained in government as indispensable kingmakers. Today it would sink into insignificance: a functional party without function.
Flirting with a breakup is not only reckless in terms of power politics. In 1982, Thatcher and Reagan-style neoliberalism seemed to be the future. Less State, more market. Since the financial crisis of 2008, neoliberalism, on which the FDP is betting everything, is a zombie. Liberals and conservatives beyond Germany's borders also find strange in 2024 the mix of stubbornly defended austerity measures and broken roads and schools: crazy Germans.
At the party conference, Lindner had some kind words for the government and praised the reduction of bureaucracy and the skilled worker immigration law. He sounded like: It wasn't all bad. The FDP is so dissatisfied at the traffic lights that it cannot even celebrate its few successes, such as the share pension.
Liberals like to present themselves as fearless doers, vibrating with a pure faith in technical progress and the power of individualism. This is also why his self-absorbed suffering over the government's unreasonable demands seems so out of place. It's not the first time. Even in the black-yellow coalition from 2009 to 2013, the Liberals were reluctant to reach any agreement.
Who needs a party that always knows best, but fails in practice, as is the case with the promised digitalization? The radical market economic change proclaimed in concise words will also remain a subjunctive. Realpolitikers who can't do realpolitik, who would find that attractive?
The FDP did not further escalate the conflict with the SPD and the Greens. But he has threatened to end the coalition. In this way he hopes to increase his effectiveness through blackmail. Tactically, you can expect to have an advantage in the upcoming stressful traffic light budget negotiations. That's not a smart strategy. Anyone who threatens too often without consequences will no longer be taken seriously.
Currently, the FDP is consolidating its reputation as unreliable. In West Germany's old three-party system, the liberals' fickleness was a strategic advantage. Today there is something self-destructive in that bad mood.