Clement has been a member of the SPD federal executive board since 1997 and SPD deputy chairman since December 1999.

Merkel s predecessor, the Social Democratic Party (SPD) leader Gerhard Schröder, knew this well.

A change of tack by Merkel now would merely reinvigorate the devastated SPD.

If this situation prevails beyond 2013, the SPD will face an unenviable challenge.

However, the SPD was again able to form a coalition government with the Greens.

It does not help Fischer among the Greens to be praised by the big brother SPD.

So it looks like SPD hit rock bottom, CSU is in freefall, and CDU the worse for wear.

In 1920, when the USPD split, he went with a minority of that party back into the SPD.

Besides, in these matters, there is no longer much difference between the center right CDU and the center left SPD.

As a result, the SPD was weakened and the CDU CSU strengthened and now, nobody knows exactly what most Germans do want.

Still, some German politicians, especially in the ruling SPD, are in principle in favour of giving the people their say in referenda.

The French Socialist Party never had its aggiornamento or Bad Godesberg (where the German SPD in 1959 renounced its last vestiges of Marxism).

But this time her opponents the SPD, Die Linke (The Left), and the Greens cleared the center and cannibalized each other on the left.

His Social Democrats (SPD) got 38.5 per cent of votes, and so did the Christian Democrats (CDU CSU) of his rival candidate Edmund Stoiber.

In the 2000 state election the SPD, under Clement s leadership, received 42.8 of all votes cast, a drop of 3.2 from the previous election.

The SPD, together with the Greens, will have to take the fight to the political center, which precludes competing with the Left for fringe voters.

Prince Max himself was forced to resign later the same day, when it became clear that only Friedrich Ebert, leader of the SPD, could effectively exert control.

It voted the grand coalition out of office with a bang, consigning the Social Democrats to the political abyss. Only ruins remain of the once proud Gerhard Schröder s SPD.

Chancellor Gerhard Schröder's resignation as chairman of Germany's Social Democratic Party (SPD) will deeply affect the distribution of forces within the German government and its slim Red Green majority in Parliament.

So will we see a new Merkel, a chancellor who, freed from the restraints of SPD in the governing coalition, will be more decisive, reformist, and willing to take political risks?

This leaves two possibilities a coalition between the CDU, its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union, and the liberal Free Democrats, or a grand coalition between the SPD and the CDU.

They have positioned themselves as a great power on the left, with a central position in the European Socialist Party, offering an alternative to the prescriptions of New Labour and the SPD.

True, the campaign has brought out nuances that may turn out to be important. Schröder s SPD uses the word social a little more emphatically than it did in the last seven years.

But this is no longer the case. Since the end of 2002, Schröder and the SPD have been facing unusually low public approval ratings and this pattern is not likely to change soon.

Even if the FDP survives the next election (which is by no means certain), the current coalition is unlikely to retain its parliamentary majority, leaving Merkel increasingly dependent on the Social Democrats (SPD).

They saved him from defeat a narrow majority of West German voters preferred the CDU CSU (40.8 percent) to the SPD (38.3) and a center right coalition (48.4) to a red green one (47.7).

The Social Democrats (SPD) and the Christian Democrats (CDU) are both committed to the social market economy, to the essentials of corporatist economic management, to maintaining the entitlements of the welfare state, and to the EU and NATO.

The SPD will recoil at the prospect, sit on the fence, and finally give in, because Merkel has a powerful disciplinary instrument she could call a new election, in which the CDU would probably win an outright majority.

At the beginning of what has been dubbed a super election year in Germany with 14 elections, one at the European, five at the regional, and eight at the local levels this is hideously bad news for the SPD.

In the best case scenario, Schröder will therefore stick to the Agenda 2010 philosophy, and Müntefering will patiently explain to a reluctant SPD that you have to cross the desert in order to make it to the Promised Land.

Gerhard Schröder will remain the German Chancellor, but his majority in Parliament has become extremely narrow. His Social Democrats (SPD) got 38.5 per cent of votes, and so did the Christian Democrats (CDU CSU) of his rival candidate Edmund Stoiber.

The Left Party is led by two talk show politicians, Gregor Gysi, the former PDS leader, and Oskar Lafontaine, the ex leader of the SPD, who do not have much more in common than a record of political failure and a talent for populist speeches.

Schröder s SPD uses the word social a little more emphatically than it did in the last seven years. The opposition CDU leader, Angela Merkel, has linked its program to the ambitious ideas of an outsider, former Constitutional Court judge Paul Kirchhof, seeking a dramatic simplification of the tax system.