The Duran Podcast - Scholz & Greens will learn nothing from election results

Episode Date: June 11, 2024

Scholz & Greens will learn nothing from election results

All right, Alexander, let's talk about the situation in Germany following the European Union Parliament vote. CDU, CSU combined, 30%. The IFDA, after everything they threw at the IFDA, 16% around there. Second place. Schultz is SPD in third place with something around 14%, something like that. a drop from 2019. And I believe the one party that got punished big time were the Greens, Annalina and Habek, who went down to around 12, 11, 12 percent from 20, 20.20.5 percent in 2019. They got punished. Rightly so, because they are the ones that are, for the most part,

running the government. And while Schultz and the SPD got punished, I think German voters, they saw the Greens as as the party that has really sent Germany into a tailspin. So anyway, what are your thoughts on the situation in Germany following the Parliament elections EU? I think these are very important results indeed. By the way, it's important to say that they've also happened on the back of a very high turnout for European Parliament elections. I believe that, I believe, it was somewhere around 65 plus percent. So this isn't just a case of, you know, low turnout anti-establishment parties doing well on the back of it. This is a, you know, strong statement by German voters about the course of the course of Germany has been taking.

here we can say confidently that the unspoken topic, the elephant in the room, if you like, is the conflict in Ukraine and the policy that the coalition has been following in connection with it. Now, let's start with the CDU, CDU, CSU, 30%. Now that sounds like, you know, it's a strong result. It's that by far the biggest party in German, on the German. political scene now. They polled double what the IF dare did, which came second. Historically, this is a very bad result for the CDU, CSU. It's been the dominant party in German politics since basically its foundation after the Second World War. It was the party of

Conrad Adenauer, of Ludwig Erhardt, of Helmut Kohl, and of Angela Merkel. I mean, it's dominated German politics throughout that time. And, you know, it typically polls, 40, 45, I believe, in one election in the Adonau era, it actually hit something like 50%. So, 29, 30%, which is apparently around what they got, in an election, in an election, which they are fighting as the opposition is very disappointing for them. Certainly, if there were Bundestag elections in Germany tomorrow, they would emerge as the biggest party. Friedrich Mertz would become the Chancellor, but he'd certainly have to enter into a coalition.

It's clear that the parties that he would have to seek coalition arrangements with would probably be the Social Democrats again based on these figures. I doubt that, for example, a coalition with the Greens would work. And we would be back to a kind of debased Merkelism, another grand coalition between the CDU. CSU and the SPD, such as the ones that Merkel ran, but without Merkel there, and with both of these parties fading. Now, I say all of that, because in the kind of mood and atmosphere that you are seeing in Germany now, you would be expecting the CDU, the CSU, to be capitalising on it and to emerge. as the runaway winner in an election of this kind, Germans who are unhappy with the government are not turning to it.

Instead, what they're doing is that they're turning to alternative parties. And here I think we need to come, not just to the IFDA, which has performed at 15, 16%, below the 21% that it's achieved in recent opinion polls. But as you absolutely rightly said, after the enormous campaign that there's been against them, the abuse, the arrest and investigation of candidates, all of that kind of thing. I mean, the fact that they're holding together and increasing significantly their share of the vote as against the previous EU Parliament elections. I mean, they've gone up significantly. That is a sign that they are now well established as the major opposition party to the German establishment

and that they are gradually, incrementally, despite the reverses and the setbacks and their own internal problems, which should not be underestimated, It still remains a very, a very, you know, fractured party, but they're getting stronger. And it seems that they made a breakthrough with younger voters. Lots of, a significant number of younger voters have now started to move towards the IFDA, which is previously a demographic that they struggled with. But the other thing, and it's something that people have overlooked,

is that we're starting to see a rise on the left as well, of the anti-establishment left as well. Because a couple of weeks ago, Zara Wagenect broke away from DeLinker and set up her own party. And this is very much, these elections were very much a test on how well she would do. Well, she got, I've seen figures of 6%, 5.7%, certainly enough votes in a parliamentary election to get herself into the German parliament, the Bundestag.

She's surpassed, in other words, the 5% limit. And I'm going to say this. I would not be surprised is some of the votes that she has got, she has taken from the IFDA. In other words, the reason the IFDA has fallen from 2021%, is partly because of the pressure that it has been under, but also because some of the more left-wing working-class voters who nonetheless supported the IFDA, because it was an anti-poch, anti-immigrant party,

but fundamentally they remained old-dards socialists, that they might have migrated to Sarah Vagenet, because to some extent that is the level, line that she is taking as well. She's in a sense similar to the IFDA on social issues and on immigration. Not the same, but you can see some similarities. Even as at the same time, she's very critical of the IFTA and takes a rather different position on economics than say the dominant group within the IFDA does. Overall, what this vote is. shows is a rise for the anti-establishment parties. Parties on the right and on the left are starting

to appear and they are challenging the Merkel centre, the Merkel constructed centre. And of course, the other big news, perhaps the single most important piece of news of all, is the collapse of the Greens. Now, the Greens, as you absolutely rightly said, was the engine within Schultz's coalition. I mean, they've been driving policy. They've been driving policy on Ukraine. They've been driving policy on the so-called green transition. They've been doing all of these things. And until fairly recently, their support base seems to be relatively steady.

Now, finally, as problems in Germany grow, it's becoming clear that a lot of people who were swept along with the sort of green rhetoric on the war in Ukraine, on the green transition, and all of the other things, they finally had enough and they said, look, we can't go on supporting this. And they pulled out. And I suspect a lot of those green voters are, probably who are switching from the Greens. I suspect they're going to the more leftist parties,

like Tsar Vaganex eventually, and perhaps also what remains of DELINCA, which has collapsed to just under 3%. So a repudiation of the Merkel-constructed establishment, the CDU, unable to capital, on the deep on popularity of the Schultz government. All of the coalition parties in the Schultz government collapsing. The SDP, once the oldest party in Germany,

once also the dominant party in Germany, a party that used to regularly get 40 plus percent of the vote in German elections down to just 14 percent, an incredibly small percentage of the vote for a German governing party to have. The Greens probably now in a state of progressive collapse, I suspect that they're going to continue to lose support. And the other coalition party, the FDP, the Liberal Party,

the party that was supposed to protect German business, and by the way, which historically had the strongest links with the German military, It's collapsed below the 5% threshold. Its ability to get representation in the parliament is gone. Clear sign the German business and the German military vote don't like the policies of the government on every conceivable issue. Ukraine, of course, but all of the others too. So an important election. And remember that in German,

elections are not really, you know, we don't get protest votes as such in EU Parliament elections. They're usually a very strong guide to how the Germans would vote if we got a parliamentary election tomorrow. Yeah, there was also a vote along geographic lines as well. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. There's a big difference as to how the West sees it, which is more aligned with C.D. the U-CSU and the East is more the alternative parties and AIFD.

So there is a divide in Germany. But, yeah, I mean, Schultz has done a terrible job. His coalition have done a terrible job. And this is reality. This is reality now that is hitting Germany. And it has hit the German voter. Because two years ago when project Ukraine started and they were talking up the escalation in the war with Russia,

Everybody was cheering it on. Politicians and many citizens, but as things went along, the reality started to make its way forward, as it always does. Yes. And humiliation as well, Alexander. I'll say one more thing.

Schultz and Annalina and Habek, they humiliated Germany on the world stage. Yes. The Nord Stream. And it has been a humiliation of Germany, the nation, it hasn't had a good two years of things. It's been a terrible performance.

And Germans who have become very accustomed to the Bundes Republic, the German Federal Republic, having a very, very high status internationally, globally. you know, being led by serious leaders, you know, Adler, Brandt, Schmidt, Cole, people like that.

I think they feel deeply let down by the quality of their leaders, as they have them today. It's something which, again, maybe most Germans aren't going to switch on when Annalina goes to Beijing and won't notice the fact that nobody turns up to meet at the airport or that she's not well received in New Delhi or wherever it is that she goes.

But, you know, somehow it percolates through. They're well aware of how, you know, they sense what the rest of the world thinks about these people. They sense what the west of the world thinks about Schultz himself, the fact that he's weak, easily manipulated, changes his position constantly. And I think also they sense that this coalition is taking Germany, not just in the wrong direction, but one which is very, very contrary to German national interests, but also German traditions. And I mean, of course, the modern traditions, the ones that developed since the Second World War,

traditions where Germany stays out of conflicts, pursues its economic interests, remains, of course, a loyal member of the Western Alliance, but does so in a restrained and moderate way and tries to keep the balance. Of course, the coalition has done exactly the opposite. And I think many people in Germany just don't like it. They don't feel comfortable with it and they are rejecting it. The one leader that got cursed out of his position was Belgium, Prime Minister Alexander DeCrow. Five percent of the vote. Complete collapse for him. So he resigned right away.

Yeah. On the spot. He's out. Well, he resigned because he had to. His political authority in Belgium has completely imploded. And again, it's not difficult to understand. why. Now, I know Belgium quite well. I had my brother used to live there for many years. I used to travel to Belgium. I got to know Belgium quite well. And of course, Belgium is very close to Britain.

So it's an easy place to reach. And I think one of the things to understand about Belgium is that there's the bureaucracies in Brussels, the EU and NATO bureaucracies, which to an dangerous, degree now have absorbed the Belgian political class. And then there is Belgium, the rest of Belgium. And Nicole is absolutely part of that world, the Brussels world, whereby the way, the language which people use is English. I mean, the language in which the EU Commission speaks, for example, is English. I mean, which is, of course, not the language that most people in Belgium speak. They speak either Flemish, which is essentially the same as Dutch, or they speak French. They don't speak English.

It's on their first language. And anyway, he belongs to that world. He's, you know, always there with EU meetings. He's always there with the Commission. He's close to, he's close to the Commission headquarters. speaks to Osceola and they'll be speaking in English with each other by the way just just just just saying all of this and it's become increasingly remote again from the life and pulse of the like of the Belgian people and of course they suffer the same economic problems as we've seen everyone else in Europe suffer

there's the same issues of immigration in Belgium, perhaps to an even greater degree actually in Belgium than there is elsewhere. And there is a sense of a political class that has become incredibly remote from them. And that is why they've turned so strongly against the Belgian government, which again has shown itself much more interested in project Ukraine and plugging issues of European integration. and shows little interest in caring about them. So it is completely unsurprising that this prime minister who has just been sending fighter jets to Ukraine, who's just done another big deal on Ukraine, has now finding himself out. If you know Belgium at all, it wouldn't surprise you in any way that this is the outcome that one sees.

So just to wrap up the video, I found it interesting that for the most part, for the most part, not completely, but for the most part, the leaders and the parties that resisted escalation with Russia and resisted escalation in Project Ukraine. For the most part, came out fairly well in these elections. For example, Maloney and the brothers in Italy, they did well. Maloney, for all her mistakes and her shortcomings, which is, in my opinion, she did escalate with Russia to a point. She has proven to be very loyal to NATO. Perhaps she doesn't have many options there. But she has become, it seems like she has morphed into more of a globalist figure than I personally thought she was when she got elected. but she did understand that there was a certain point that she could not cross, which was a direct conflict with Russia.

Yes. And she resisted and pushed back against Macron's escalation. She resisted and pushed back against troops in Ukraine. And we have had Italian officials coming out in the last couple of months talking about a need to negotiate. We have to figure something out. We have to wrap up this conflict. This can't go on any longer. It's dangerous.

And they did, they did well. Maloney did well. So, I mean, I think you did see that trend as well in the, in the elections. Resistance to escalation in a war with Russia. You did much better than the Macron policy, which was all out escalation in World War III. I think it's entirely right. I mean, I think Maloney has shown herself to be a consumer politician. She became prime minister of it.

By the way, when I say consumer politician, this is for me a double-edged compliment. I mean, I'm not phrasing her as a solid person, but she does understand Italian public opinion. And she became Prime Minister of Italy. She wanted to reassure people in Brussels and in Washington and London. She was absolutely a team player. She worked to make friends, or appeared to be friends with Ursula.

And I think at some point, a couple of months back, she suddenly, she started to understand that this wasn't playing at all well with people in Italy. And you can see the trends in Italian politics. I mean, I should say that again, in Italy, I don't follow the Italian media, but I understand that in Italy, the media has been much more skeptical about project Ukraine, pretty much from the start. And in this, it reflects very strong feeling amongst people. people in Italy who rather like the French, many of them rather like the French, have rather

favourable historic views of Russia. So I think Maloney understood that, you know, if she continued to take a strong pro-Ukrainian, pro-Zolensky line backing, you know, Ukraine to the hill, going all the way to support Ukraine with more and more arms deliveries. and more and more threats like Macron was doing, that it would destroy her electoral base. It would undermine her support with her own supporters. And being a consummate politician, I think she understood that she had to shift ground.

And she did. And she shifted. She pivoted in time and convincingly and effectively. And she's again come out on top. it worked out for her. And I think you're absolutely right. Right across Europe, we see party place after place where the people who have been most critical of Project Ukraine have done well. Perhaps the runaway success is Austria, where the, I think it's called the Freedom Party, they came first.

They are straightforwardly opposed to the sanctions. They are strongly critical of Project Ukraine. there are all of those things. So you can see that. But I think we do need to remember something, which is that in spite of the fact that all of these parties have done really well, and maybe they will continue to do well and will get stronger over time, ultimately, because of their enormous institutional base and, you know, the weight that they carry, The dominant parties, the dominant force within the European Parliament continues to be the Atlantis Merckelian Centre, centrist, neoliberal establishment. By some calculations, as a result of these European Parliament elections, their support base has declined from 69% total MPs to 6.

62% total MPs. So it's a fall. I mean, but, you know, they're still in control. They're still in control of the European Parliament, which does mean something. There's still the power within the EU system. And we should not, you know, delude ourselves into thinking otherwise. But the trends are against them. and it will worry them and it will alarm them.

Already before the elections began took place, they were already saying that it was all going to be because of Putin. He was apparently controlling all the election campaigns and his information programs with what were going to cause all of these victories. I mean, an absurd idea altogether. But, you know, quite likely because these people I mean, they're not going to change their copy book. They're, you know, their manual.

They're not going to change their manual of politics. What they're probably going to say that, you know, the Russians have won even further. We've got to deal with Russian infiltrators even more firmly than we've done. And there's going to be even more funding for all these institutes and think tanks and all of the rest, which provide all the various fact checkers and, you know, information suppressors that we've been seeing proliferate across Europe. More of the same, in other words, even though, as we have seen in these elections, against the realities of the economic situation, the social situation, all of that, all of this attempt to suppress,

opinion and thoughts is not working. In fact, more and more people are questioning and becoming alienated. Yeah, I agree. I think that after these elections, instead of the European globalist political elite moderating their positions a bit and calming down, I think they're going to go even harder now on the suppression, on the cancellation, they're going to try to escalate with Russia even harder. They're going to call everybody a Putin stooge.

I think that's the direction that they're going to go. And instead of taking a step back and saying, you know, maybe we've gone too far, I think they're going to double and triple down in the direction that led them to this defeat. But on the flip side, just a final question comment on the flip side, you have a coalition now that is forming in much the way that Orban a couple of weeks ago said could form and should form in order to stop the slide into World War III. Yes, and I have to say, by the way, here I ought to say yet again, that Horvarn has turned out to be a much more, a prescient analyst,

much better understanding of the currents of European opinion than almost anyone has been, including, by the way, myself. I should say this. I mean, I was far from sure that we would get results like the ones we've had, out of this election, I thought that with all the information suppression and all the campaigns and all the criticism and all the abuse and all of that, I thought it was quite likely that we would end up with the European Parliament looking the same as this outgoing one. And it hasn't turned out that way. So Orban understands that there is a sea change underway in Europe. And he's

right. And if we look at the situation altogether, there's now a very. very strong chance that we will have an anti-war parliament in France as a result of the parliamentary elections that are taking place there. There is now a vocal force in Germany that is opposed to the war. And this isn't just the IFD, Sarajevojnecht's party is the same. So there's, you know, that block also starting to form. Notice that young people voted overwhelmingly, apparently not overwhelmed, but there was a major shift in votes amongst young people towards the IFD. Very surprising in a country like Germany, given its history. But I wonder whether, you know, all the talk about reintroducing conscription and all of that with the implication that, you know, you're all going to go

often fight the Russians, whether that's one of the reasons why young people are turning against the neoliberal establishment in Germany too. And, well, we see that in other countries. So Austria, where there's parliamentary elections, I believe, coming up fairly soon, based on the results we've seen, it's quite likely there will be an anti-war party there. We've already got that situation, the anti-war government there. We've already got that situation in Slovakia, Hungary, of course. Meloni is starting to shift her ground. We've seen a rise of parties that are anti-war in the Netherlands and Belgium. Vilders' party did quite well too, for example. So, you know, Orban is right.

Now, of course, he also says that, you know, we need the United States. We need a certain outcome in the presidential elections in November. That's still some way off. And we can't be certain how that's going to turn out at all. Not at this point in the electoral situation. But we could see the trend in Europe. The Europeans, the European public don't like Project Ukraine. they're becoming increasingly critical of it, support for Zelensky and all that that represent is falling away.

They're not impressed. In fact, they're not only not impressed. They are hostile to the increasingly belligerent and militaristic rhetoric of their leaders. And of course, that's only one of the reasons why they're voting as they are. There's other big issues. Immigration remains a hugely important one. inflation as well. But all of these issues, all of these issues, it must be always remembered, are connected. In politics, everything is connected. And what it amounts to is more and more

people in Europe are saying, the people who govern us aren't interested in us. They don't care about us. They don't care about what goes on in our lives and to our businesses and to to us on our workplaces. They're not interested in what the situation is in the shocks where we have to go and buy food for our families. And they're more interested in other things, things that are not related to us, and some of which, frankly, are dangerous and hostile to us,

like war, like uncontrolled immigration flows, like price growth, things of that kind. So you can't compartmentalize. You can't separate these various issues and say, well, if we can sort out the one, we can somehow sort out the other. Because everything in politics is always connected. That is a lesson, by the way.

I learned a long time ago. Yeah, completely agree. I've got one more question for you, but question, comment, but yeah, immigration, recession, inflation, and now you want to send me or my sons and daughters to fight the Russians in Ukraine? Are you out of your freaking mind, people are saying? There it is. There it is. And 100%. 100% our leaders don't care about us because they don't. And it shows they don't even pretend anymore. They don't pretend. They don't pretend. they say it. Adelina, I believe, said at a conference about a year ago. Exactly. I mean, she did. I mean, she did. I don't care. I don't care if people protest and demonstrate. I'm just going to carry on. Well, as we see, her vote is not quite halved. But I see she's lost about two cents off it. Not that that's going to make a challenge.

No, the problem is that they're not going to listen. They're going to double and triple down on their current trajectory, unfortunately. But just the final, very quick comments that the video doesn't drag on too long. the Switzerland Peace Summit. All of these people that have just suffered such a huge loss are going to be in Switzerland, given that you have so many other world leaders that are just canceling, almost by the hour, it seems, canceling on the Switzerland Peace Summit.

You're going to have a Switzerland Peace Summit with Zelensky, Schultz, Sudak, Macron. I mean, this is a disaster. Oh, it's an absolute disaster. It's absurd. It's completely ridiculous. And again, it demonstrates, straight, so completely out of touch, all of these people are. So all of these losers,

all these out of touch are popular losers are going to be there, you know, partying with Zelensky because that's how it's going to appear in a swanky hotel in Lucerne. It's going to simply reinforce the view that these people don't care about those that they're representing. All the losers gathered in Switzerland. That's exactly right. Anyway, we'll We'll end it there. The durand. Dot locals.com. We are on Robill Odyssey,

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