Has the Chancellor finally understood?

There are increasing signs that the government is seeing where it needs to turn. 2024 could be the year of the "It can be done!".

At the end of a rather morose 2023, a trend seems to be consolidating, keeping a remnant of hope alive: The German government, the SPD, the chancellor - they seem to have heard and understood the bang after all. Major and minor moments of that everyday political common sense that seemed so completely lost are lining up. "There you go!" you could say. And that is the best we can hope for in the coming year: that the frustration and anger will not continue to eat away at the broad middle of society, but that a relieved reconciliation with the political system will take hold, along the lines of this very sigh of relief: Well, that's all right!

The last point in this little chain for the time being is the announcement by the Minister of Labor and Social Affairs, Hubertus Heil. He wants to reduce so-called total refuseniks among the unemployed to zero if necessary. It remains to be seen whether this will save significant sums in practice or whether it will be quickly curbed by the courts. What matters is the attitude, the signal.

The Minister is certainly not breaking with the spirit of the coalition agreement and the SPD's course without consulting the Federal Chancellor. There and in the subsequent law, the citizen's income was designed to overcome the supposedly inhumane Hartz IV regime: Even very lazy unemployed people were no longer to be threatened with de facto cuts, further training for the unemployed was to be given priority over placing them in one of the more than 1.5 million vacancies. And after an increase in the citizen's allowance at the beginning of 2023, the next one - by twelve percent - will come on January 1.

More money, less pressure, less guidance: this is how the citizen's income could be summarized. The SPD and the Chancellor could never count on much understanding from the employees who have to finance this through taxes and levies - and that is exactly what they now seem to have understood. As a result, the pressure is being increased again and a special bonus that was paid to those unemployed people who were willing to undertake further training has been scrapped. You can do it!

The power of reality beats the stubbornness of those in charge

Similar about-turns in the direction of practical common sense have been made in the traffic light government's immigration and asylum policy. Ukrainian war refugees are now to be brought into the German labor market with significantly more pressure than before. They simply have to register with the employment office much more often than before - that's possible. It was incomprehensible to the average consumer why a much higher proportion of them work in comparable countries and are not supported by the welfare state. Here, too, the German government is revising the course it originally set out on - the force of reality is greater than the stubbornness of those responsible, at last.

In addition, as many accelerated asylum procedures as possible are now to take place outside Germany's borders, on the periphery of the EU. This could well result in well over 300,000 new asylum seekers not coming to Germany next year - and almost all of them staying in the end, regardless of the outcome of their procedure. The Chancellor has announced "deportations on a grand scale" in a very grandiose manner. For many reasons, it is already clear that this will come to little. The number of asylum seekers, which is so politically explosive, can only be seriously limited by immigration to Germany, not by deportations from Germany.

Down-to-earth common sense is not a bad advisor

Here, too, the attitude is completely different from what the SPD and the Greens of this government had initially committed themselves to. The goal, at least that, is now once again the departure of all those who do not have the right to stay. And not the search for a way to let them stay. That's possible! many citizens, not only in eastern Germany, who live in overburdened cities and communities will think. Why not do it this way?

Is this populist or even AfD-driven because several elections are due in 2024? The answer is probably a question of one's own political viewpoint from which to view the changes. But it cannot be denied that the government is buckling under the pressure of reality. It seems to be learning something, late, but still. Above all, it now seems to be listening more closely: Bourgeois, down-to-earth common sense is not a bad advisor even for a social democratic chancellor.

In the polls, the decline of the SPD and the rise of the AfD have been acting like communicating tubes for months. This can simply be watched without resistance or attitude. However, it would be much better if the centre-left government called Ampel understood that it has to do something about the AfD because it can. At least as long as it is still in government. You can do it!