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SPD Vice President Anke Rehlinger
Photo: Ronald Wittek/EPA
In week one after the "small federal elections" in North Rhine-Westphalia, the spin doctors and thesis knights of political Berlin are booming.
Did the three state elections in 2022 confirm Chancellor Scholz's course or did they give Friedrich Merz an impetus?
That doesn't really matter to the voters in the three federal states.
They made their voting decisions largely on the basis of national politics.
And, most importantly, decided which person should lead the country.
The answer was very clear in Saarland and Schleswig-Holstein, but not quite so clear in NRW.
Even if it may sound strange after the defeat in North Rhine-Westphalia: it is clear that the SPD can win elections again.
After all, the SPD in Saarland has succeeded for the first time in Germany since 2013 in replacing a CDU incumbent.
With regard to the state elections of the last few years, the starting point was actually that anything other than three incumbents defending their positions would be a surprise.
The surprise succeeded the SPD.
After winning the federal election, we showed in Saarland that the SPD can also win in the federal states.
Is this already the "social democratic decade" promised by Olaf Scholz?
No, it takes a lot more than that.
The federal election was something like an »ear opener«.
Previously, the SPD could often do or say what it wanted, the loser image became a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Since then, people have had confidence in the SPD again: leadership and competence.
But that alone does not make elections a sure-fire success.
The »social-democratic decade« must now also be filled with life in terms of content.
And I recommend doing this with issues that are close to the everyday life of the vast majority of our society.
For example: We must preserve existing jobs as far as possible and at the same time create new ones.
Structural change – especially in the automotive and steel industries – hit my federal state, Saarland, earlier and harder than other regions.
The only SPD government in Germany therefore offers the opportunity and the responsibility to show that social democrats can successfully shape this change.
If the structural change succeeds here, then that will be an example of what Olaf Scholz means by the “social democratic decade”.
And in view of the interconnected value chains, the automotive industry in Bavaria, Lower Saxony and Baden-Württemberg also has a great interest in the suppliers in Saarland not disappearing.
This also means that the SPD-led federal government has a special responsibility to support us here in Saarland.
But not only for party political reasons, but also because it affects other regions as well.
Our Basic Law obliges us to ensure equal living conditions everywhere in Germany.
Other examples are the energy transition and the transport transition.
The massive expansion of renewable energies must be a joint declaration of independence from the federal, state and local governments.
Renewables are no longer just a climate policy task, but an economic policy and now also a geostrategic one.
That must be a social-democratic change, especially in concrete action.
This combines an infrastructure task with the social question, because all of this has to be organized in such a way that energy remains affordable or becomes affordable again.
Likewise, the SPD should answer the enormous problem of rising prices in all areas much more clearly.
This also applies to mobility policy.
We need more mobility, especially in rural areas, but with less traffic.
Therefore, a culture war against individual mobility by car is just as wrong as the dramatic underfunding of public transport, which the FDP Federal Minister of Transport Wissing, despite other agreements in the coalition agreement, is currently not combating with enough commitment.
If winning the federal election was an "ear opener", the SPD must now succeed in using the hearing it has gained and in providing examples of success in social democratic politics and taking clear positions.
The successful management of structural change would be excellently suited to this – as would the complicated change in the energy and transport sectors.
And that with professional solutions, in clear language and socially fair.
What future tasks for social democracy!