Germany's liberal collapse parallels Clegg's fate

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/may/25/germany-liberal-collapse-free-democrats

In September 2009, Germany's liberal Free Democrats had their best ever result in a general election. They won 15% of the vote, enabling Angela Merkel to drop the Social Democrats – who suffered their worst result since the second world war – and instead form the first "black-yellow" coalition of Christian Democrats and Free Democrats since 1998.

But in the 20 months since then, the Free Democrats have spectacularly collapsed. In Baden-Württemberg in March, they lost power after their share of the vote dropped from 11% to just 5%. Meanwhile in the Rhineland-Palatinate, their share of the vote dropped under 5% – which meant they would no longer even be represented in the state parliament. They did even worse at the weekend when they got just 2.5% of the vote in the "mini-state" of Bremen in the fifth of seven regional elections in Germany this year.

The Free Democrats now seem to be in danger of being replaced as Germany's third-largest party by the resurgent Greens, who seem to have benefited from the Fukushima nuclear disaster and are now the second-biggest party in both Baden-Württemberg – where they now lead a state government for the first time in their history – and Bremen. Merkel had extended the life of Germany's nuclear power stations after the 2009 election but immediately after Fukushima promised to shut them sooner. The Free Democrats, on the other hand, resisted the U-turn – a big reason for their plummeting popularity in a reflexively anti-nuclear country.

Guido Westerwelle, the exuberant but somewhat irascible figure who has been the face of the Free Democrats for the last decade, has been blamed for the election defeats. In opposition, Westerwelle's calls for tax cuts seemed to resonate with German voters. But as soon as he took over as foreign minister in 2009 – even though he seemed to have little interest in foreign policy – things started to go badly wrong. In particular, he was blamed for Germany's decision to break with its Nato allies and to abstain on UN security resolution 1973 on military intervention in Libya in March (perhaps unfairly, since Merkel was ultimately responsible for the decision).