LEADING GERMAN conservative Horst Seehofer has warned that the ruling Christian Democrats (CDU) are drifting too far to the centre in office and urgently need to correct their course to the right.
As leader of the CSU, the CDU’s Bavarian sister party, Mr Seehofer was interpreted as engaging in an attack on the holidaying Chancellor Angela Merkel.
“We need to remain the party of law and order. We won’t let ourselves be unsettled by false liberalism,” Mr Seehofer told members of the CSU, which has its base rural Bavaria. “The CDU and the CSU should not chase after the zeitgeist but represent core basic values.”
Deciding what those core values are has become a challenge in the CDU-CSU under the pragmatic leadership of Angela Merkel. After a decade as leader and five years in office she has transformed the formerly centre-right party of Helmut Kohl into a more centrist organisation that chases middle-class families and reaches out to single parents, immigrants and even homosexuals.
At a closed-door CSU meeting, Mr Seehofer told colleagues the party should “push its Christian credentials more, that always goes down well”.
Mr Seehofer’s credentials have suffered somewhat among the CSU’s most traditional voters after he had an affair and a baby with his secretary. But he remains the unchallenged leader of his party and, for Dr Merkel, a formidable ally and foe in one.
Mr Seehofer’s warning carries extra weight, coming as it does as polls show a record slump in support for Dr Merkel’s government.
After the loss of a recent state election in North-Rhine Westphalia, analysis showed that some 300,000 CDU voters simply stayed at home. A poll for the Emnid institute found that 40 per cent of traditional CDU voters now feel “politically homeless”.
“These are people concerned with traditional values, who want to combine business with values, but increasingly come up against forms of social democracy within their own parties,” said Emnid head Klaus Peter Schöppner.
The unease is not confined to the CSU, and leading CDU figures have used Dr Merkel’s absence to air their anxiety.
“There’s nothing wrong with appealing to new voters,” said senior CDU member Wolfgang Bosbach. “But there’s plenty wrong with neglecting traditional voters.”
He called for the CDU to present clear conservative positions from “protection of the unborn and integration to security and . . . a relaxed form of patriotism”.
A recent exodus of conservative talent from the CDU has prompted speculation that room has opened up on the right wing of German politics for a new party.
Meanwhile foreign minister Guido Westerwelle chaired his first cabinet meeting this week, in the chancellor’s absence. Mr Westerwelle, Germany’s first openly gay cabinet minister, said the country urgently needed a “points system” to attract skilled workers. A recent survey said Germany currently lacks 60,000 skilled workers, a figure that will rise to two million by 2020.