Whether at home or abroad, the British political class dislikes coalitions. "Set Angela free," the Economist implored German voters last week. "Unleash Merkel," chorused the Times yesterday. There are two main problems with this British wish for Germany to experience the smack of firm government under Angela Merkel. The first is that every plausible outcome of tomorrow's German general election will produce a coalition of some sort – with all the compromises and postponements of difficult choices which this involves. The second is that during the campaign the German electorate has shown very little sign of wanting to reject the "grand coalition" between the centre-right CDU and the centre-left SPD over which Mrs Merkel has presided for the past four years.
Ideological partisans reflexively assume that crisply defined government in their own image is or ought to be the norm. The trouble is that partisan government prospers more easily under unfair electoral systems like Britain's first-past-the-post system – and even better without any elections at all – than it does under fairer ones like Germany's checked and balanced proportional system. If the polls in Germany are even approximately reliable this time, no party in the next Bundestag is likely to have much more than a third of the electorate's support. According to yesterday's Stern-Forsa poll, the CDU-CSU is on 33% and the SPD on 25%, with the liberal FDP 14%, the Left 12% and the Greens 10%. A coalition government is therefore all but inevitable. The only questions are which coalition it should be and whether it is strong enough to govern effectively.
As the poll figures show, there seems to be no majority in Germany for a coalition of either the left or the right. Perhaps tomorrow's voting will spring a surprise. But the logical conclusion from the 2009 election campaign is that Germans have been reasonably happy with the grand coalition of the centre parties and would like it to continue, almost certainly under the popular and consensual Mrs Merkel. Who, least of all in this more unsettled country, is to say they are wrong? These have been difficult times for all industrial economies. A coalition which balances the CDU's historic commitment to the social market with the SPD's jobs and social justice concerns during such upheaval makes more sense than some of the alternatives.
British observers may sneer. But maybe we should be more humble. Part of what is wrong with our politics is our unfair electoral system. With a fairer system – and perhaps even without one – we too may one day face the need for coalition government. In such circumstances, a peacetime British grand coalition might not be as unthinkable as it seems right now.