Global News Journal

from Tales from the Trail:

Special Relationship? How quickly they forget….

So much for "Hilly-Milly".

Just last year U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gushed to Vogue magazine about  former British Foreign Secretary David Miliband,  calling the young diplomat a dashing addition to the international scene.

"Well, if you saw him it would be a big crush. I mean, he is so vibrant, vital, attractive, smart. He's really a good guy. And he's so young!" Clinton said in remarks that provoked a spate of joking British tabloid headlines about the new "special relationship" between the United States and Britain.

Well, absence doesn't appear to have made the heart grow any fonder. Asked on Wednesday if she had any advice for Miliband following his decision to bow out of frontline politics after losing a Labour Party leadership contest to his younger brother, Clinton was brief.

"I have no advice for anyone in politics. I'm out of politics. I obviously wish him well and I am very intrigued by the interesting political dynamics that are occuring inside the United Kingdom," Clinton said, before launching into a positive assessment of the state of relations with Britain's current government.

Asked again if she had any farewell words for Miliband, Clinton finally managed a few: "I enjoyed working with him and wish him well."

It was left to visiting German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle to sum up Miliband's exit from the international diplomatic round robin, where new faces appear in the wake of every big election.

Germany: a tale of two foreign ministers

“Self-confident”, “smart” and “rhetorically brilliant” – just some of the adjectives the media have lavished upon Germany’s favourite politician as he has covered thousands of miles traversing the globe on his country’s behalf since Chancellor Angela Merkel’s new centre-right administration took office late last month.

But Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg is not in charge of foreign affairs — a position usually associated with voter popularity. He is defence minister.

Already nicknamed ”the other foreign minister“, the 37-year-old Guttenberg, a conservative former economy minister who cut his teeth on foreign policy, has won praise for his fluency in English, his directness and his ability to outshine more powerful counterparts on the international stage.

Watching the aristocratic AC/DC fan from the sidelines has been the new foreign minister, Guido Westerwelle, whom newspapers have mocked for adopting a cautious, defensive approach that critics say is more redolent of, well, a German defence minister.

In fact, Westerwelle, 47, has already travelled thousands of miles further than his predecessor Frank-Walter Steinmeier over the same period. By the time the first month in office has passed he will have journeyed to some 15 states, including Israel, Afghanistan and the United States. Steinmeier managed only 10 and did not get beyond Europe in that time, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said.

Germany might be the winner if its diplomatic duel helps it towards a more assertive foreign policy — something it has struggled to achieve in the long shadow of the Nazis.

But it could also find itself giving mixed messages to the outside world, to say nothing of potential tensions within the new coalition. Guttenberg belongs to the Bavarian CSU and Westerwelle heads the pro-business FDP — parties that have clashed on a range of policies in the past.

Will former minister’s stab in the back hurt Germany’s SPD?

The last time Germany went to the polls, Wolfgang Clement was deputy head of the Social Democrats (SPD), and one of the most powerful figures in government: the “super minister” in charge of both economic and labour market policy, who had previously governed the SPD heartland of North-Rhine Westphalia, home to 18 million people.

 Four years on, Clement is urging the public to vote for one of the centre-left SPD’s most bitter rivals, the business-friendly Free Democrats (FDP).

 In a newspaper advertisment on Friday, Clement said he was backing FDP leader Guido Westerwelle in Sunday’s federal election.

 An admirer of Britain’s Margaret Thatcher, Westerwelle has branded the SPD socialists, and wants to end their 11 years in office to form a centre-right coalition with Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives.

Though Clement had long had a fractious relationship with the left of the SPD, the endorsement was unprecedented, said Josef Schmid, a political scientist at the University of Tuebingen.

 ”The man is no fool but to act like this is just idiotic,” he said of Clement, a former journalist who spent nearly 40 years in the party. “I can remember nothing like it.”

 The 69-year-old Clement left the SPD last November after a row blew up over his criticism of the party in the state of Hesse.

Merkel flirts with FDP as German election heats up

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and her would-be allies, the opposition Free Democrats, did not waste any time putting their spin on the re-election of President Horst Koehler on Saturday – a razor-thin victory for the conservatives over the rival candidate put up by their coalition partners, the Social Democrats, in a vote four months before the parliamentary election.

Mere minutes after Koehler squeaked out a one-vote victory in the 1,224-seat Federal Assembly to win a second term as Germany’s ceremonial head of state, a beaming Merkel popped up on national television alongside FDP chairman Guido Westerwelle for a joint impromptu news conference rich with symbolism; it was the first time they appeared together in such a formal setting since the 2005 campaign.

“It’s no secret that we are working on achieving a majority together,” said Merkel at the briefing with the opposition leader while her coalition partners, the SPD, licked their wounds. “Today was certainly not a bad day as far as that goal is concerned,” added the chancellor, whose hopes for a centre-right coalition with the FDP after the 2005 election were spoiled when her conservatives got hit by a powerful downdraught at the very end of the campaign.

Westerwelle and Horst Seehofer, the chairman of the CDU’s Bavarian sister party Christian Social Union, stood next to Merkel and called Koehler’s narrowest of victories an important “signal” for the September parliamentary election.

But was it?

Aside from the fact that all three previous incumbents who ran for a second term were re-elected, Koehler’s victory in 2004 had no tangible impact on the 2005 parliamentary election. The CDU/CSU and FDP also elected Koehler in 2004, when he beat the same SPD candidate Gesine Schwan for the first time. They all hailed that a harbinger of a new centre-right federal coalition as well. But a year later they fell short of winning a majority in the parliamentary election — and the CDU was forced to settle for a loveless grand coalition with the SPD.

Opinion polls this year suggest the centre-right coalition could win between 46 and 50 percent of the vote. That might be just enough for a majority and a renewal of the coalition that last ruled for 16 years (1982-98) under Chancellor Helmut Kohl. Or that might fall short again — with roughly the other half of the electorate casting their ballots for left of centre parties like the SPD, Greens and Left party.