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SPD Party Congress: Red Alert

2019-12-07T16:15:28.082Z


It is a turning point. For the Social Democrats, two centers of power will be fighting each other in the future: the party versus its ministers. That could be dangerous.



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Everything went well again at the party convention of the SPD, at least if you look at the meeting from the point of view of Saskia Esken and Norbert Walter-Borjans. Their election results were tidy, the question of leaving the Grand Coalition was circumvented for the time being, and for the sake of peace, instead of three future five Social Democrats, the two presidents may represent.

But the superficial harmony conceals that the party convention of the SPD represents a turn of the century. The comrades have always had many lines of conflict, left wrestling with right, young with old. Now there is a new edge that will shape what happens to the Social Democrats in the coming months, maybe two years, on one side is the party. On the other the Cabinet (and the faction).

Above all, the new front run will complicate the "talks" with the Union. The acting ministers of the SPD will have to argue that they have achieved a lot in order not to lose their right to exist. Walter Borjans and Esken will have to do the opposite: from their point of view, no compromise between ministers will be good enough, otherwise they would lose the enemy grand coalition with which they have become chairman.

There is no good option

All ministers face hard times. Power politics, content. The party has thwarted Olaf Scholz's fiscal stance by opposing the principle of black zero and the debt brake. It has declared the climate package negotiated by Scholz and Co. inadequate and called for a new minimum wage initiative.

The most important representatives of the SPD in the Federal Government, Olaf Scholz, Hubertus Heil and Svenja Schulze, have lost their leeway. If they decide to take a hard line with the Union to protect the credibility of the new leadership duo, they risk losing the coalition eventually. If you bet on advancing at any price, you are bringing your own party leadership into a mess. Both are bad.

More at SPIEGEL +

Sven Döring / DER SPIEGELSPD in the existential crisis views of a disturbed party

Certainly, the government SPD and the heart of the party have almost always faced each other over the past twenty years. But no matter who led the party, there were always Social Democrats at the head of the party, either themselves represented in the Cabinet (Schröder, Müntefering, Gabriel) or carrying the spirit of government (Beck, Nahles, Schulz).

That's not the case with Esken and Walter-Borjans. They were chosen because they deftly behaved as the opposite of the establishment, as non-conformists, who take on all those who feel comfortable settling down in the government. They will have to deliver and they have already delivered. The fact that Hubertus Heil was able to save himself as the only representative of the Cabinet in the party leadership, is not because the two chairmen made him an offer. He got so fearlessly in position that in the end they could not help but take him into their vice squad.

By the way, Saskia Esken, the supposedly weaker of the two presidents, is the more dangerous for the ministers. She, who until recently played only a small role in the Bundestag faction, did not spend much of her time on what the SPD has implemented in the government, instead emphasizing how she envisioned the future party. Left, clearer, edged. The ministers left her practically unmentioned, she only spoke to Olaf Scholz in a newspaper interview shortly before the party congress. He said the "Süddeutsche Zeitung" had to "implement more of it in the future", "what the party wants".

It was just one of the many signals to the Cabinet: Times are different now.

Source: spiegel

All news articles on 2019-12-07

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