Germany:Germany's Social Democratic Party will adopt a new party programme today, promising to reverse its shift to the political centre and abandoning key social reforms of the Schröder era.
After nearly a decade in power, the SPD is flagging in the polls and trapped in an ideological squeeze between the new middle-way course of the Christian Democrats (CDU) and the new Left Party.
SPD leader Kurt Beck (58), asked the party's annual conference in Hamburg yesterday, to support his plan to take the SPD left of centre again with a programme promising more security in a globalised world.
"The Social Democrats are the benchmark of social justice, success and a peaceful future," he told delegates, rounding on the "so-called left" headed by former SPD leader Oskar Lafontaine and "transitory Social Democrats" like the CDU of chancellor Angela Merkel.
Dr Merkel has radically softened her political course since her liberal reform campaign of 2005 almost cost her the election and forced a grand coalition with the SPD.
"At their core, the CDU is still a party of neo-liberals and free market radicals," said Mr Beck. "Now they're pretending to be in favour of social policies but in reality they are still pursuing neo-liberal goals."
As the grand coalition passes its half-way mark, the SPD is trailing the CDU by 14 points in opinion polls and needs a radical shot in the arm.
With that in mind Mr Beck redrafted the new party programme, deleting any neo-liberal language and reinstating SPD support for "democratic socialism".
Greatest attention has focused on his suggestion to reverse Schröder-era labour market reforms to extend the duration of dole payments to jobless over- 50s. That proposal has been embraced by the SPD left and the unions and bitterly opposed by economists, business leaders and leading SPD cabinet ministers.
Labour minister Franz Müntefering faced down Mr Beck on the proposal but lost, exposing a growing gap between SPD ministers in Berlin and Mr Beck, a bearded, rotund Rhinelander and state premier who is closer to the party grassroots.
Mr Beck was re-elected SPD chairman yesterday with 95 per cent delegate support, proof that his 18-month struggle to establish his authority over the SPD is over.
Former chancellor Gerhard Schröder appeared at the conference, deserting his former cabinet colleagues to give his blessing to Mr Beck's plan.
"Agenda 2010 is an instrument, it is not the goal. It can be modified," he said, reminding delegates of SPD political achievements since 1998.
"The conservatives fought us for that and now they're copying us. You're the original. They're the fakes."
The last SPD programme, agreed months before unification in 1989, was obsolete before the ink dried.
Modernisation attempts in the 1990s along New Labour lines were interrupted by Dr Schröder's 1998 election victory.
The last substantial position paper came in 2003 when Dr Schröder, facing mass unemployment, a stagnant economy and empty coffers, browbeat the party into accepting the little-loved Agenda 2010 of welfare cuts.
Resented then as now by the SPD left as a neo-liberal attack on the welfare state, economists and even Dr Merkel have since credited it with aiding Germany's economic turnaround.
Now unemployment is at a post-unification low and economic growth of 2.4 per cent forecast this year.
Mr Beck hopes his offer to soften reform edges will woo back voters as well as the 200,000 SPD members that have deserted the party in recent years.