Christian Lindner, head of Germany's Free Democratic Party, walked away from coalition talks, leaving onlookers to puzzle over what his motives were | Odd Andersen/AFP via Getty Images Christian Lindner’s German government gamble The FDP leader’s decision to walk away from coalition talks has prompted a furious backlash.

What is Christian Lindner’s game?

A day after the German liberal leader’s bombshell decision to pull the plug on coalition talks with Angela Merkel’s conservative bloc and the Greens, Berlin was awash with theories as to why he did it.

Some argued he had planned to blow the talks up from the outset, that his Free Democrats (FDP) were merely going through the motions in negotiations to avoid appearing obstructionist. As evidence, they pointed to Lindner’s repeated assertion that the FDP wasn’t “afraid of new elections.” In fact, the liberals are “afraid to govern,” according to this theory.

Another hypothesis was that Lindner had been inspired by the recent success of Austrian conservative Sebastian Kurz, who is on course to become his country’s next leader. After resurrecting the FDP, which didn’t win enough votes to enter parliament in 2013, Lindner has become hungry for more, so the thinking goes.

If Lindner thought that by seizing the initiative on Sunday and declaring the talks over he could avoid blame, he was wrong.

Like Kurz, Lindner has taken a somewhat harder line on migration policy, attracting conservative voters disappointed by Merkel’s stance on refugees. With Merkel under growing pressure from members of her own party, Lindner decided to seize the moment, some say, betting that if new elections are held, the FDP can pick up disgruntled conservative voters.

“I have the feeling that Lindner has been looking a little too much towards Austria recently,” Greens leader Cem Özdemir said Monday.

Whatever the hypothesis, there was broad agreement — both in Berlin political circles and beyond — that Lindner was mainly to blame for the implosion of the talks.

Almost no one was willing to take his explanation — that the FDP acted out of principle after concluding it would have to sacrifice its core values — at face value.

'Well-planned spontaneity'

There’s no doubt that Lindner’s announcement of the FDP’s withdrawal, precisely 10 minutes before midnight on Sunday, was tactical. His soundbite-ready statement (“It’s better not to govern than to govern badly”) betrayed careful preparation.

Julia Klöckner, a senior member of Merkel’s party who took part in the negotiations, called Lindner’s move “well-planned spontaneity.”

Nonetheless, such criticism has more to do with style than substance. It’s also true the FDP and Greens were never going to be easy partners. Both parties fish in the same pond of voters — well-educated, city-dwelling elites — although the liberals have a somewhat more conservative profile.

That helps explain why the talks were so fraught. For weeks, participants expressed mostly pessimism about the prospects of a deal, saying as recently as the end of last week that they had yet to agree on countless issues.

During coalition talks, the Greens made what on the surface appeared to be significant concessions, dropping their insistence that Germany shutter its coal plants and ban new fossil-fuel powered cars by 2030. But the Greens also insisted Germany stick to its ambitious climate goals, prompting criticism from conservatives that the concessions were mostly cosmetic.

The FDP, meanwhile, worried that its priorities, including tax cuts, a stricter refugee policy and a European course that wouldn’t require Germany to pony up more money, were getting short shrift. Merkel, FDP negotiators complained on Monday, was accommodating the Greens while leaving the liberals with “breadcrumbs.”

“Apparently they thought the FDP would be with them in any case, regardless of the substance, and that’s not doable with the FDP anymore,” Volker Wissing, one of the FDP’s negotiators, told German radio, adding that Lindner had made the party’s limits clear from the outset. “Ignoring that was fatal.”

There’s no question that the FDP has learned from past mistakes. The last time it entered into a coalition with Merkel, the party was forced to back off from almost all of its campaign promises, earning it the moniker “pushover party.” It almost disintegrated as a result.

That history was largely ignored on Monday with Lindner bearing the brunt of criticism, both on- and offline. The harshest “FDP bashing” as one German magazine called it, was on Twitter, where countless posts poked fun at the party’s campaign slogans, such as “doing nothing is an abuse of power.”

If Lindner thought that by seizing the initiative on Sunday and declaring the talks over he could avoid blame, he was wrong. The broad criticism put him on the back foot and at midday, he emerged to defend the decision.

“If it’s so difficult to find a common basis on known issues during exploratory talks, how would such a government function when it comes to dealing with unforeseen issues?” he asked.

After yesterday, Germans won’t ever find out.

With Germany now likely headed toward new elections, Lindner’s new challenge will be to convince voters it’s better that way.