Grim parallels with Germany for Nick Clegg?

Germany is one of the few countries that Nick Clegg has been able to look to for tips on how to be a successful Liberal party in coalition with a larger Conservative party. In 2006, Guido Westerwelle even took a delegation of Free Democrats to a Lib Dem frontbench meeting. Coffee House once predicted that, if the AV referendum was won, Clegg could one day become Britain’s Hans-Dietrich Genscher, a permanent powerbroker.

The parties are of course different in many ways. The Free Democrats are decidedly more pro-market and pro-business than the Liberal Democrats. They also have a lot more experience of government. Before the last election, the Free Democrats were part of Helmut Kohl’s governments until 1998. And whereas the Lib Dems might have considered coalition with Labour in 1997, the Free Democrats have sided with the CDU and the CSU since the 1980s (except in 2002, when “equidistance” was their buzzword).