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Family Minister Giffey, Vice Chancellor Scholz
Photo: Christian Thiel / imago images
Red-Red-Green in Berlin has always been seen as a model project: a left SPD, left Greens, pragmatic left - that just fit in with all the arguments and animosity.
And - this is how the plan worked - the capital city coalition was supposed to show how things could go in the federal government with center-left: idealism plus common idea plus prestige projects.
In Berlin, to this day, it is the fight against usury of rent or cars on the streets and, of course, the commitment to a colorful city with all its special milieus and scenes.
But since the beginning of this week at the latest it has been clear: the socio-ecological basic sound of the capital alliance could soon come to an abrupt end.
Namely when the state SPD elects a new leadership at the end of October.
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Berlin SPD politicians Saleh, Giffey
Photo: Wolfgang Kumm / picture alliance / dpa
At the beginning of this week, the "Tagesspiegel" published a remarkable interview of the two party leaders-designate.
Still-Federal Family Minister Franziska Giffey and Raed Saleh, head of the parliamentary group in the House of Representatives, explained in which course they want to steer the Berlin SPD in the future.
It was, you have to read it like this, a declaration of war on the two partners in the coalition:
The
rent cover
?
Will expire and be replaced by a rent index.
Left-wing extremists
?
Would have to adjust to "hard rules, hard measures".
The
key areas of
urban development and transport, so far in the hands of the left and the Greens?
You want to merge and take over yourself.
Giffey and Saleh garnished their specifications with lots of friendly signals to corporations and companies.
"We're developing a pragmatic program," said Giffey.
The focal points: "Building and transport, education and science, economy and work, functioning administration, security and order."
What was missing from this list: social issues, for example.
Or the environment.
There are still a good eleven months until the parliamentary elections in Berlin.
Light years in politics.
But at the latest with Giffey's and Saleh's freestyle, the SPD is going into the election campaign, that's clear.
Economically more liberal and more law and order - that could be the new profile of Berlin's social democracy.
It will then be an election campaign that is also directed against the left and the Greens.
For the coalition partners, Giffey's and Saleh's announcements are a provocation.
Left-wing cultural senator Klaus Lederer railed on Twitter that the SPD would like a "Berlin from the day before yesterday" back.
"The sayings definitely sound like the nineties."
Left country leader Katina Schubert accused Giffey and Saleh of "old social-democratic Basta politics".
Monika Herrmann, Green District Mayor in Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, also commented on the interview in which Giffey set the tone: "This clearly neoliberal spin is quite surprising for a top social democratic candidate."
The case shows: The SPD is in the wrong place.
On the one hand: red-red-green is still popular in the capital.
A new edition of the coalition would be the most realistic power option for the Social Democrats.
In theory, they must continue to create a center-left mood.
On the other hand: The SPD is under increasing pressure, it urgently needs to distance itself from the left and the Greens in order not to go under in the election next year.
In any case, the polls do not bode well for the comrades.
In some surveys, they are now well behind the Greens, sometimes even behind the left.
The office of governing mayor, which the SPD currently occupies with Michael Müller and which Giffey is now aiming for, could lose the party.
What connects Berlin and the federal government
It actually seems like a sensible strategy if the SPD doesn't even try to be greener than the Greens and more left-wing than the Left;
if it radiates into the bourgeois camp and wants to serve milieus in which the others do not score.
Especially since the more conservative Giffey would embody exactly this line.
But the strategy harbors plenty of potential for conflict - even within our own ranks.
The advance of the designated party leaders caused a stir in the state association.
Above all, the Jusos are foaming: The Berlin SPD "still makes its program at party congresses, not in newspaper interviews," wrote Sinem Tasan-Funke, head of the youth association's country, on Twitter.
All of this could be a harbinger of what is in store for the Social Democrats at the federal level in the coming months.
There, too, red-red-green is probably their only power option - an alliance for which the federal government would have to drum even more than in Berlin in order to dispel fears and reservations.
There, too, the SPD is wrestling with potential partners.
The Greens in particular have escaped the Social Democrats in the polls.
There, too, Olaf Scholz, a proven right-wing party, could profile the SPD - albeit also in conflict with a party that is actually being trimmed to the left by its chairman.
Can that go well?
SPD leftists see the initial situation in a very similar way to Giffey and Saleh.
"The analysis is correct," says a leading comrade.
It is about connecting both worlds in the party and separating oneself from the Greens and the left.
It becomes problematic, however, when the party rights distance themselves from their own projects such as the Berlin rent cap, as if they had nothing to do with it.
"That has the potential to explode within our own ranks," warns the Social Democrat.
Greens and leftists are under a little less pressure to set themselves apart.
In their core areas - ecology and social policy - both parties already take extreme positions.
At the same time, they also know there that social majorities can only be achieved if all coalition members of a three-party alliance are perceived as an independent force - with different competencies.
"I think we have to ensure that there is an alliance perspective - before the election. You have to see in good time who can bring which electorate with you," said the parliamentary manager of the Left in the Bundestag, Jan Korte, at the beginning of the year to SPIEGEL.
His recommendation to the SPD at the time: it should "make a classic middle class policy, address craftsmen, skilled workers and industrial workers".
What Giffey and Saleh are now doing in Berlin, however, Korte considers completely wrong.
"You shouldn't be like the left," said Korte on Tuesday.
"But it can't be the solution to go light on CDU and to distance yourself out of the blue from the popular coalition that you lead yourself."
In the end, the decisive question will be whether the provoked differences can be productively resolved - or whether they thwart the plans for a left alliance.
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