comment

It is a transparent dramaturgy that they have prepared for the German Social Democracy for this year.

The push by SPD leader Andrea Nahles to say goodbye to Hartz IV, the initiative for a basic pension without means test by Labor Minister Hubertus Heil, the demand of Vice Chancellor Olaf Scholz for a minimum wage of twelve euros: All this goes against the Union, it is the prelude to the anti-GroKo-round of the SPD.

The contradiction to the coalition agreement is of course intended. The SPD leadership has started Operation Exit. Starting this Sunday, the party leadership gathers in Berlin to discuss further action in the social democratic liberation struggle and to adopt programmatic papers.

CDU leader Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer and the CSU leader Markus Söder can already be prepared for what the SPD will say at the latest on the occasion of the revision clause enshrined in the coalition agreement in the fall: It's over.

Basically, the governing party SPD wants to do exactly that with their partners from the Union, which made the ruling party FDP in the summer of 1982 with its partner SPD: speed up the coalition collapse by reform advances and deposit the buck for the foreseeable break of the alliance as possible in the Noch-partner , What was then the liberal market thrust of the FDP Minister of Economic Affairs Otto Graf Lambsdorff, these are today the welfare state ideas of the SPD.

But there is one key difference: The FDP provoked the break to form a new government with the Union. The SPD of the year 2019 puts everything on it to take themselves out of the play. That's very destructive, if you will. Because the party is facing a fall into power politics nothing.

And yet, this destructiveness does not have to be a mistake.

Crucial to the success or failure of this divorce strategy is not whether it comes to new elections. Some SPD strategists seem convinced that elections are dangerous because the polls are currently so bad. Therefore, as far as the thinking is concerned, one must continue the grand coalition until the SPD is strong again.

Spoiler: That will not happen in the GroKo. In addition, new elections are by no means inevitable should the SPD leave the coalition.

A possible example is a new Jamaican attempt under a designated Chancellor Kramp-Karrenbauer. FDP leader Christian Lindner has clearly signaled that he is ready even without new elections for Robert Habeck from the Greens, it is a bit more difficult. He would have to accommodate the formation of a government and take into account the strong virtual poll percentage of the Greens.

Of course, an unions-led minority government is also possible. New elections are only one option of several.

The divorce process, which the SPD will accelerate from this Sunday on, thus has - unlike in 1982 - no clearly foreseeable or to be determined by the target point. This difficulty can not be resolved.

Stimmenfang # 73 - Debate: Disappointed SPD voters meet Secretary General Lars Klingbeil

  • Subscribe to
    • Apple podcasts
    • Google
    • Spotify
    • Deezer
    • Alexa
    • RSS

All podcasts

Instead, the SPD should focus on its real problems in the withdrawal movement of the Grand Coalition. Because if she does not get a rough grip on what is coming, it does not matter what's coming - whether new elections, Jamaica or whatever - the SPD would have to fight for nothing less than its existence.

The problems are as big as known :

First, there is the question of personnel , the dissatisfaction with Andrea Nahles. The scrapped predecessor Sigmar Gabriel is currently experiencing an unusual comeback at the base, a chancellor candidate is not excluded. But he will not be chairman again. Who should do it if Nahles failed? That the pale Lower Saxony Stephan Weil the best chances are granted, that says everything about the personal reservoir of the SPD.

Second problem: the strategy . In an attempt to remain a people's party, the SPD has become a faceless everyday party, has lost its political center. It stands for everything and nothing, without power perspective beyond the grand coalition. There is (still) no state to be formed in the federal government with the Left Party.

Third problem: the story . The SPD is normatively deflated. Why does social democracy need it? Too often in recent years, the answer seemed: as a corrective of the Union. This is too little. Greens and AfD make former SPD voters exclusive offers from different sides, because the SPD does not come with their package offers anymore. Where has it stayed, the party of the rising and the will to achieve, the party of just redistribution?

Each of these three issues poses a threat to the SPD. All three, however, have massively downsized the party in the polls. The now attempted liberation in the matter of welfare state reform may be a beginning that bears fruit: Majorities in the population support the ideas of Nahles and Co.

But the SPD needs more than this departure. It needs change.


You want to answer the Sunday question for the covenant? Vote here: