LEADING ARTICLE : Germany's left out in the cold

Germany's Social Democratic Party, for much of the post-war period the most admired and imitated social-democratic party in Europe, now faces a credibility crisis of some proportion. After its wretched performance in Sunday's elections to the Berlin regional assembly, where it recorded its lowest share of the vote since the war, the SPD seems destined for the second division, retaining government in an ever narrowing circle of rust-belt regions. As Helmut Kohl rides high in the opinion polls in the 13th year of his reign, the Social Democrats are in disarray.

Not since 1959 has the mountain to be climbed seemed so high. Then, faced with the purgatory of permanent opposition, the SPD threw away its Marxist shackles in the famous Bad Godesberg declaration, opening the way to the respectable salons of national politics and, eventually, government. Now there is no obvious ideological baggage to discard.

In the past, the SPD has been hampered by its self-imposed role as conscience of the nation. Thus it has opposed the stationing of German troops abroad, even as part of a multinational peace-keeping force. That issue was resolved earlier this year in favour of those advocating a foreign role for the Bundeswehr. But the unseemly split in the SPD vote during the parliamentary debate has done much to lower the party's esteem among the electorate.

The voters may yet forgive the Social Democrats for that, but they are unlikely to forget their lack of vision in post-war Germany's greatest moment: unification. Chancellor Helmut Kohl refused to be swayed by the arguments of the Bundesbank and the chattering classes, who thought instant union with the east was not feasible. The Social Democrats hesitated, produced figures to show the true cost of the enterprise and fought the 1990 elections on a gradualist ticket. They lost. Mr Kohl never tires of trumpeting his success and reminding Germans who it was who denigrated that achievement.

In the battle to oust the most popular chancellor since Konrad Adenauer, the SPD is also fighting the shifting arithmetic of the German electoral system. In the west it is caught between the immovable colossus of the Christian Democrats on the centre right, and the soaring Greens on the left. In the east the equation is even worse. There is a three-way competition on the left between the SPD, the Greens and the post-Communist Party of Democratic Socialism. Unlike in Britain, where the left's leading party takes all, the left-wing vote remains for ever fragmented in Germany's mixed electoral system.

There lies the SPD's dilemma. Even if it were to find a Blair-like figure to replace the lacklustre Rudolf Scharping, the Social Democrats would need to find an entirely new segment of voters to have any chance of government. Worse, its potential coalition allies, the Greens, are distancing themselves as far away from "yesterday's party" as they can. The tide may be turning in the left's favour in other parts of Western Europe, but there seems little prospect of the German Social Democrats joining that current.