Party congress: SPD is looking for a new strength: BAS tears party congress

The SPD chairman Lars Klingbeil under pressure in his own party granted mistakes in the election campaign and in his behavior after the Bundestag election. He was undoubtedly responsible for the historically poor result of 16.4 percent, said the Vice Chancellor at the party congress in Berlin. There, the Social Democrats Minister of Labor Bärbel Bas want to vote in addition to Klingbeil to the party leadership and look for the way out of the crisis with social democratic core concerns.

But it rumbles violently in the party. You can see how tense Klingbeil goes to this election party conference, as the 47-year-old comes to the speaker. He asks his “comrades” that they “looked back together after a plain text over the past few months”. The rigorous personnel policy, the grip for the power that he has surrounded himself with “his people”, that everything had happened “not out of an end in itself, but because I want to do everything to make our party strong again”.

Klingbeil thought of resignation

Klingbeil had reached after the parliamentary group after the Bundestag election, made himself the main contact for election winner Friedrich Merz at the black and red coalition negotiations and is now a vice-chancellor. His previous co-party leader Saskia Esken, on the other hand, will in future be a simple MP in the Bundestag. This had been harsh criticism for Lower Saxony in the past few weeks. At the state party days, the base calculated with him and described him “indecent”.

Klingbeil gave a defensive speech at the party congress. “I know I’ve made mistakes in the past few months,” he said. But there were only two options for him after the election result: “Either I stop or I am fully responsible for the SPD.” He decided to fight.

Bang in the pronunciation is initially missing

The “plain language pronunciation” expected by Klingbeil remained comparatively good at least at the beginning of the party congress. The delegates rarely expressed criticism to a specific person. But it is also a narrow ridge: how much criticism can you express before you damaged the party leader?

Former Minister of Labor Hubertus Heil, who ran empty in the SPD personnel carousel, was passionate about. He did not feel any bitterness, despite some disagreements with Klingbeil, emphasized the Lower Saxony. The SPD should not succumb to any “auto -aggressive self -taught”. “No cabal, we had that broke us,” he emphasized.

Juso boss Philipp Türmer warned that the party should not simply pass to normality in its most severe crisis. Everything as always – “that shouldn’t happen to us,” he emphasized. To do this, please the party leadership for a huge advance of trust.

Bas reads the Levites of her party

The designated party leader BAS gave a rousing, moody and left -wing speech – the delegates celebrated them afterwards. The Minister of Labor called for the fight for industrial workplaces, made a strong position for parity. Above all, she read the Levites to her party. How the SPD dealt with Esken was “no highlight”.

Esken had to experience “that solidarity is not always a matter of course – not even in social democracy,” said Bas. But if the SPD wants to fight for a solidarity society, it must first be a solidarity party. “Otherwise nobody believes that!”

Esken himself said the “Stuttgarter Zeitung” and the “Stuttgarter Nachrichten” before the party congress: “I found a lot of what came out of my own ranks, but also from outside as notes.” You certainly made mistakes. “But the way Häme was cushioned over me was disproportionate and tubularless.”

SPD wants to develop a new basic program

BAS also stands for the intended realignment of the SPD in terms of content: the Social Democrats want to rely more on their traditional core issues and become a party of work again. With the party congress, the SPD wants to initiate the process for a new basic program.

Many voters have recently not been clear what fundamental goals the SPD pursue, said the designated general secretary Tim Klüssendorf. It is central “that the SPD is not allowed to be the Status-Co party, which (…) tries to save what has been fought for somehow”. For this, the SPD must also do programmatic basics.