Interesting comment from a reader in Berlin on the recent leftward shift among Schroeder’s Social Democrats (the SPD):

“I read your Daily Telegraph bit about Germany. Actually, I don’t know if you have been following this, but there is an election coming up in North Rhine Westphalia in May. NRW is the SPD heartland in Germany and their support in polls for the SPD has been soft. Presumably in response, about a week and a half ago, the SPD’s [new party chief] Muentefering, has been complaining about “predatory capitalism” and “locust investors” (investors from the US and Britain that invest in German companies, which then lose their ties towards Germany and decide to send jobs to China). The general interpretation is that all of this is to throw red meat to the NRW base to get them interested in the election so that the SPD can stave off a loss. Another interpretation, put forward by Oswald Metzger, a Green, is that Muentefering is setting the SPD up for the opposition. In other words, the SPD can’t oppose the center-right CDU (assuming they win the next general election) with the economically responsible, center right policies they have been implementing, so they need to prepare the type of rhetoric suitable for an SPD opposition party. Hence the anti-capitalism.”

If you’re in a hole…