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Germany's best hope - or a man without substance?
By Bertrand Benoit

Published: November 1 2007 02:00 | Last updated: November 1 2007 02:00

After two numbing years of "grand coalition", drama has returned to German politics in the rounded shape of Kurt Beck, the Social Democratic party chairman and the man who could drag the country's oldest party back from the abyss.

Or could he? Put to close scrutiny, and contrary to what is becoming mainstream opinion in Berlin, the rise of Mr Beck looks very much like a mirage - a failure of leadership masquerading as a renaissance for a battered organisation that has seen four chairmen come and go in three years. Over the past few weeks, Mr Beck has inaugurated a marked leftward shift in the SPD's discourse. This earned him a consecration worthy of Fidel Castro at the party's conference last weekend, where - after a Castro-like two-hour speech - he was confirmed in office with 95.5 per cent of the votes.

The centrist Süddeutsche Zeitung crowned the bearded Rhinelander the legitimate heir to August Bebel, co-founder of the SPD, and Willy Brandt, its greatest chancellor. By returning ideals - some would say ideology - to the party's message and ending its flirtation with economic liberalism, the paper reasoned, Mr Beck had reaffirmed its identity. Party members like to compare him with another Rhinelander: Helmut Kohl, the former Christian Democratic chancellor who, scorned as a junior politician for his awkwardness, went on to become Germany's longest serving leader.

Pollsters even think they have detected signs of life in the SPD's ratings since the conference. A one-point gain may seem modest, but it could signal a change of trend in the party's fortunes, which have declined since Gerhard Schröder, the last SPD chancellor, scraped back into office in 2002.

Plagued by disputes over Mr Schröder's economic reforms, the SPD has since lost virtually all regional elections. Members have left in droves, many to the radical Left party, and the SPD's rating has been stuck for months at about 25 per cent, a full 15 points below the Christian Democrats'.

Given how the party has suffered under the "grand coalition", another indecisive outcome at the next election could put the party leadership under pressure to go for a three-way coalition with the Greens and the Left party, bringing the heirs to East Germany's Communists back to power for the first time since unification. Several SPD grandees, including Klaus Wowereit, the popular Berlin mayor, are already calling for such an alliance.

One obvious, though not decisive, flaw in the theory about Mr Beck being the SPD's first decisive leader since Mr Schröder is his all too obvious lack of conviction as a tough-talking left-winger. As state premier of Rhineland-Palatinate, he ruled together with the free-market Free Democrats between 1994 and 2006 - they declined to join his government last year after the SPD won a rare absolute majority.

His leftward turn was a centrist politician's tactical manoeuvre born of panic at the party's plunging popularity. Given this lack of credibility, it is no wonder that the SPD's junior cadres did not, in fact, rally behind their leaders at the party conference. The SPD executive board suffered two defeats when the congress voted in favour of a general speed limit and tougher environmental rules. Delegates also forced it to convene an extraordinary party conference should the government go ahead with rail privatisation.

The suggestion by Norbert Röttgen, one of the CDU's top men in parliament, that Mr Beck had opened a Pandora's box he may find impossible to control was a mere statement of fact.

This is where the comparison with Mr Kohl fails. Mr Beck may share the elder statesman's earthy accent and endearing lack of charisma, but he has shown none of his - and, for that matter, Chancellor Angela Merkel's - ruthless skills at eradicating in-house criticism. Opinion polls show a majority of card-carrying SPD members still trust Ms Merkel more as a chancellor than they would their own chairman.

In a recent Financial Times interview, another German-speaking politician said leadership was "about bringing people along. If 30 per cent of the people are for one thing and 70 per cent are against it, and if you are absolutely convinced it's the right thing to do, then it's your job to lead the people."

This snippet of wisdom came from Arnold Schwarzenegger, governor of California. Mr Beck could do worse than take the action hero's advice instead of pandering to a new radicalism whose unruly waters could easily sweep him away.

The writer is the FT's Berlin bureau chief
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007