Germany’s best hope – or a man without substance?

Analysis feature. After two numbing years of 'grand coalition', drama has returned to German politics in  the shape of Kurt Beck, the Social Democratic party chairman and the man who could drag the country’s oldest party back from the abyss. Or could he? Put to close scrutiny, and contrary to what is becoming mainstream opinion in Berlin, the rise of Mr Beck looks very much like a mirage – a failure of leadership masquerading as a renaissance for a battered organisation that has seen four chairmen come and go in three years. During the autumn of 2007 Mr Beck inaugurated a marked leftward shift in the SPD’s discourse.