SPD parliamentary group vice-president Esdar defends the demo appearance: “That was right”

Wiebke Esdar has had a stressful weekend, and the furor is also reflected in her email inbox. On Friday, the SPD deputy parliamentary group leader took part in a demonstration against the Chancellor’s “cityscape” statements. The headlines were also followed by hostility. “I wonder when the first person will beat you with a club out of the Bundestag,” says an anonymous letter.

On the phone, Wiebke Esdar doesn’t sound like it bothers her. She now wants to have some of those messages checked. According to the motto: it’s just part of the job. Esdar is also calm about the loud protests from the Union. “I honestly can’t understand the excitement,” she says dryly. “I think politicians shouldn’t suddenly position themselves differently in their constituencies because they are now in a leading position in Berlin.” So it’s not all that bad?

Under the motto “We are the cityscape,” Esdar demonstrated on Friday against the Chancellor’s controversial statements. Admittedly as one of many, but at times also at the front of the demonstration. This had to annoy the coalition partner from the Union in the matter, but also in the form. Esdar is part of the SPD’s leadership team, is deputy parliamentary group leader in the Bundestag – and is taking part in a demonstration that is directed against statements made by his own head of government?

In any case, the Union is seriously pissed off. The SPD is trying to limit the damage. And once again the picture emerges of a coalition that divides more than it unites. So who is the woman who gets the CDU and CSU excited – and also her own people?

Wiebke Esdar is a self-confident and mission-conscious member of the Bundestag, is considered hard-working and meticulous, and rarely avoids discussion. This is not only evident in the simmering “cityscape” debate.

However, with her demo performance, Esdar put herself in a situation that could potentially backfire – and that’s what happened. At least judging by the impression that arose in the public: “SPD parliamentary group vice-president demonstrates in the first row against Merz,” was the headline in the “Bild” newspaper. “Clear stance against the Chancellor – and from within our own government!”

This cannot be dismissed out of hand, and Esdar himself doesn’t do it either. “I am a directly elected member of parliament in Bielefeld,” she emphasizes on the phone. Long before that, she had co-founded the “Alliance Against the Right,” which called for protests on Friday, and organized many demonstrations against neo-Nazi marches and against racism. “Our central message has always been: Bielefeld is a colorful and cosmopolitan city.”

This is also how Esdar wants her recent participation in the demo to be understood. “Now there has been a generalized statement from the Chancellor, and I have expressed solidarity with those in my constituency who found his ‘cityscape’ statements to be hurtful. That was right – and I stand by it.”

Now coalition MPs, even in leading positions, are by no means required to think everything the head of government says is great. It is also clear that a demo appearance against one’s own chancellor puts additional strain on the already difficult vibes in the black-red coalition. Especially since two SPD members from Merz’s own cabinet, Vice Chancellor Lars Klingbeil and Environment Minister Carsten Schneider, had already taken a clear position on the “cityscape” controversy: Not like that, Chancellor.

It could be said that Wiebke Esdar is not squeamish about her own party, even if it has to be from her point of view.

Esdar once made a name for herself as a committed GroKo critic and drummed up support for the – ultimately successful – candidacy of the party left Saskia Esken and Norbert Walter-Borjans for the SPD chairmanship. To the annoyance of the party establishment. The controversial comrade, who also sits on the party executive committee, is now part of it, so to speak. Esdar is one of three speakers for the Parliamentary Left, the left wing of the SPD parliamentary group, and co-chair of the influential North Rhine-Westphalia state group in the Bundestag. In the latter function, she demonstrated, if you will, against her own chancellor – only in November 2024 he was still called Olaf Scholz and was appointed by the SPD.

In a joint statement with Dirk Wiese, now SPD parliamentary group manager and at the time Esdar’s co-chairman in the NRW state group, she distanced herself from Scholz’s renewed candidacy for chancellor – and praised Boris Pistorius, who was already defense and popularity minister at the time. It weakened Scholz’s position and was also criticized as lacking solidarity. Nevertheless, the initiative met the feeling of many comrades that they could not win with the unpopular Chancellor as a candidate – so why not speak plainly?

After her controversial demo appearance, Esdar is now confronted with the question of how she feels about the black-red coalition. “Anyone who is at the forefront of the SPD faction leadership demonstrating against the Chancellor must ask themselves whether they still want this coalition to be successful,” complained Steffen Bilger, the first parliamentary managing director of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group, in the “Süddeutsche Zeitung”. So question to Wiebke Esdar: Does she still want this?

“Of course I want the coalition to be successful,” she says, which is why she will continue to work “constructively” with the entire government. And subtly adds that she is looking forward to “the concrete solutions that we will find in the upcoming budget negotiations with the Union.” As SPD deputy parliamentary group leader, she is responsible, among other things, for the areas of budget and finance and has already developed a reputation in the last legislative period as an expert budget politician who knows the subject matter deeply. It therefore sounds like a declaration of war.