CHALLENGE IN BONN WILLY BRANDT’S POPULARITY ABROAD NO SHIELD AT HOME

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32902, 28 April 1972, Page 8

CHALLENGE IN BONN WILLY BRANDT’S POPULARITY ABROAD NO SHIELD AT HOME

(Reprinted from the "Economist")

The result of the Baden-Wurttemberg state elections in West Germany last week-end was a blow to Chancellor Brandt and his Social Democrat Party. Since then the Christian Democrat Opposition tabled a noconfidence motion in the Bundestag where the West German Budget was debated this week. However, Mr Brandt won the vote.

Everybody likes Mr Willy Brandt and wants to be nice to him—or so it appears from a glance around the present international scene. When the Qtieen invited him to be her guest at Windsor during his visit to Britain there was scarcely a murmur of protest from even the most hardened anti-German protesters.

Mr Heath’s Government, being well aware of its particular need to retain Mr Brandt’s good will during the tricky period of the Common Market negotiations, has no intention of neglecting Bonn now because of its preoccupation with developing better relations with Paris; and a Labour Party in opposition is not going to let its own private agonies over the Common Market prevent it from demonstrating its affinities with the world’s most important Social Democratic head of government.

M. Pompidou may be no Socialist, but he prefers Herr Brandt’s East European policies to those of the Opposition in Bonn. The Nobel peace prize committee has given the Chancellor’s Ostpolitik its seal of approval. Mr Brezhnev has taken him boating in the Crimea, and the Poles have given him a welcome that few people could have expected to see a West German leader receive in Warsaw.

Outside Europe, too, the Brandt Government’s stock is high. West Germany is still America’s respected partner in Atlanticism. It is no longer being reviled by Arabs for alleged favouritism to Israel. The African associates of the European community are appreciative of the German contribution to its pool of development funds.

Bonn’s relations with the third world as a whole are not now bedevilled by the former dogmatism of the Hallstein doctrine. At the U.N.C.T.A.D. meeting in Santiago Herr Schiller shone out last week as the spokesman for a Government that actually proposed to offer the poorer countries easier loan terms at a time when the general trend was the other way.

Restive coalition Herr Brandt is an essentially pleasant man, but he must be occasionally surprised to find how many people outside Germany are well disposed toward him and his Government. How different it is from the home life of a hard-pressed Chancellor. His own party has no majority in the Bundestag and his coalition depends on the meagre and restive support of the small Free Democratic party, led by his Foreign Minister, Herr Scheel.

Only a few weeks ago the Free Democrats were contemplating with horror the prospect that the week-end’s election in Baden-Wurttem-berg, one of their former strongholds, would bring about their elimination from the legislature of that southwestern land; for the signs were that they would not even get the 5 per cent of all votes that is the prescribed minimum for representation. And this glum scene was set against the background of the Christian Democratic Opposition’s unrelenting assaults on Herr Brandt’s eastern policies. For a while last month it looked as if the Government might easily lose the vote that is due to be held in the Bundestag on May 4 on the ratification of the treaties with Russia and Poland that he negotiated in 1970. There was even talk of a general election being held this year.

Brandt’s confidence Even a moderately satisfactory result in that Land could help to steady the coalition’s ranks, in the Bundestag on the eve of the ratification debate. Herr Brandt has gone so far as to claim, in a statement to Der Spiegel, that the ratification of the easterp treaties is in the bag. But even if that claim proves justified, was he not overoptimistic in making the further prediction that things would really begin to look up after the treaties had been ratified? There are several reasons to expect that the coalition could still find itself running into heavy weather even if it does triumph on May 4. The most important of these reasons, perhaps, is the Government’s conspicuous lack of success in managing the economy. Admittedly, the recession has not materialised. But inflation has not been checked; it is now running at an annual rate of 5.8 per cent. And in this Budget debate the Government will have to explain the fact that the Budget deficit has increased by £324m to £BBom, as well as the fact that Herr Schiller has not yet implemented the muchpublicised tax reform that was one of the main pledges given in the 1969 General Election campaign.

One of the obvious implications of the large Budget deficit is that the Government will have to postpone, or shelve for the time being, many of its projects in hous-

ing, health and education. For the inhabitants of such a prosperous region as BadenWurttemberg, which has been called Germany’s California, the prospect of cutbacks in spending on social welfare may not be too daunting. But there are other issues that now worry even the most prosperous members of the electorate.

Lawlessness The most topical of these is the rising tide of lawlessness. Herr Brandt seems to have got the message here. He has promised to spend £l7m more on public security next year, and has called officials from five major cities together for an urgent conference about ways of combating crime.

The coalition is also under strong pressure to do something about the situation in the universities, where, in the public mind, Left-wing radicalism is coming to be identified with simple hooliganism. Herr Brandt’s Government treasures its liberal image and is particularly reluctant to alienate its own radical young supporters by undertaking the amendment of the existing law on university affairs. But it is also anxious now not to be branded as a Government of inaction and ineffective liberalism. The Chancellor’s critics within his own party hold him personally responsible for failing to give a lead, and they particularly condemn his way of dealing with the young Left-wingers whom they see capturing more and more positions at the party’s grass-roots. Three weeks ago a leading radical created a sensation by defeating a moderate Brandt nominee in a local leadership contest in Munich.

Herr Brandt does not seem likely to give his Government a brisk transfusion of new blood such as might be expected to occur in similar circumstances in Britain. He has a reputation, rather like Mr Nixon’s, for almost fanatical loyalty to the colleagues he has already appointed. And the ousting of anybody as conspicuous as, say, Herr Schiller, who has undoubtedly become one of the most unpopular members of the ministry, could be damaging because it would be taken as an admission of the Government’s present weakness.

The most pointed criticism of the Chancellor now to be heard in Bonn is that his heart is not really in the party battle: “Willy fancies himself as a Friedenskanzler — a peace Chancellor — and his Nobel prize has turned his head a bit.” His great problem now is that he faces in Herr Rainer Burzel a tough new Opposition leader who dearly loves a party fight. All the Chancellor’s success internationally does not remove the need for him to turn his hand to the party political struggle. The Christian Democratic Opposition feels that it has drawn blood and that, even if it loses the present fight over the eastern treaties, it now stands a good chance of winning next year’s General Elections. The danger that faces Herr Brandt is that an apparent triumphant climax to his Ostpolitik enterprise, with the successful ratification of the treaties next month, could be followed by painful anticlimax if the high hopes generated by his policy were even partially disappointed. Whichever way things go in the ratification debate, there vtfll still be a rough path ahead for him.