Friedrich Merz has to fear new stress in the coalition

Recently, Dirk Wiese from the SPD requested a tax reform. Less load below, more at the top. The Union doesn’t want that. Wiese is the parliamentary managing director of the parliamentary group, and one could assume that such a speech will send itself somewhere between the dramatic world events and the domestic political mood in Germany. But sometimes there is an interesting little story behind it.

Such a parliamentary managing director has a bulky functional name, but an important role. He is the faction manager, regulates the processes, acts as an early warning system for the mood among the deputies and organizes the majorities together with the parliamentary group leader. In short: everything that recently went wrong in the Union faction should be elected as a new constitutional judge.

The Chancellor is of course hierarchically over a parliamentary managing director. But when he is wise, he knows how important the so -called PGF can also be of the coalition partner for him, especially if the majority of the government is only twelve votes as with Friedrich Merz.

Angela Merkel is known that it attached great importance to the work of the PGFS for a smooth functioning of the coalition, which is why she left the post in her first reign in her first time Norbert Röttgen, who was still a close political confidante of her at the time. On the SPD side, the PGF Olaf Scholz was called much better than with his parliamentary group leader Peter Struck. Someone from her surroundings at the time said that it had “something soothing” for Merkel when she knew that a problem with Scholz had been negotiated.

The fact that this is the same with Merz and Wiese around 20 years later seems rather doubtful. The two have known each other for a long time because they come from the same constituency in the Sauerland and, after everything you know, do not like special. Merz recently won this constituency by a large distance, Wiese has moved into the Bundestag via the SPD country list.

Before Friedrich Merz began to rule with the SPD, his personal relationship with many Social Democrats was bad. He felt poorly treated by Chancellor Olaf Scholz, wrongly attacked by others. This is one of the reasons why Merz did not suffer some SPDLers, and Dirk Wiese was very, very high up on this list to express it cautiously. Wiese, on the other hand, saw little reason to improve the relationship, Merz often criticized hard and annoyed him in the election campaign by securing the Internet address for Merz ‘Slogan “More Sauerland for Germany”. Now this Dirk Wiese plays a key role for the power of the Chancellor. That already has something.

So if Wiese disturbs the already brittle coalition peace these days, it may be that the chancellor thinks when reading the message: the one again!

But a PGF is often also the harbinger of greater trouble. SPD boss and finance minister Lars Klingbeil did not promptly removed tax increases for stuffing household holes last weekend. Now the CDU is raging. None of this has something soothing for this chancellor.