Social Democrats win in Austria

Perhaps the most under-reported story of the week was the Austrian Social Democrats' surprise general election victory.

Granted, they'll likely be in a Grand Coalition with the incumbent Christian Democrats, but the result surely deserved more coverage than the almost complete silence we got from most of the British media. Especially since the far-right may now be excluded from power.

Perhaps Austria is irrelevant. But it didn't feel irrelevant in 2000, when Jorg Haider's Freedom Party, having won 27% of the vote, took its place in the governing coalition with the Christian Democrats, to a frenzy of media attention.

Comments

[swatantra nandanwar]

You've said it. Austria doesn't figure highly on map of political importance, along with Switzerland and Luxembourg.
So why are the Socialists going into a coalition government with the Christian Democrats, whose previous partners were the Facists?