New Bundestag election: Scholz’s journey into the unknown: First G20, but then what?

One thing is certain: the G20 meeting in Rio de Janeiro, which Chancellor Olaf Scholz is heading to on Sunday afternoon, will not be his last summit. There is another EU summit in Brussels on December 19th and 20th, which is a must-have date in his calendar. At that point, as things stand, he will have already lost the vote of confidence in the Bundestag, but will still be Chancellor.

What is not yet certain: Will he then also be the SPD’s candidate for chancellor? Although it has now been clear for ten days that the Bundestag will be re-elected, the party leadership has so far refrained from nominating him with a board decision. That would have been possible last Monday. Nothing happened. The result is a debate about replacing Defense Minister Boris Pistorius, who is much more popular in the polls, as candidate for chancellor, which is gaining momentum.

A question of survival for the SPD?

A number of local politicians have now spoken out openly in support of Pistorius. The mood in the party clearly speaks for a change, the chairman of the SPD Bochum sub-district, Serdar Yüksel, recently told “Stern”. “If you surveyed the members of the SPD, 80 percent would be for Pistorius.” Whether Scholz runs again is not just his personal decision. “The question now is whether the SPD will survive.”

The SPD leadership has been trying in vain to counter the growing debate for days. “Olaf Scholz is the Chancellor. And everyone who bears responsibility in the SPD has made it clear in the last few days that we stand behind him,” said party leader Lars Klingbeil again at the weekend on the sidelines of an SPD event in Essen.

Müntefering: “Of course, counter-candidacies are possible”

Shortly before the Chancellor’s departure to Rio, Franz Müntefering, probably the most popular living ex-party leader, also spoke up. The 84-year-old called for a decision at a party conference, if necessary in a vote: “Of course, opposing candidacies in your own party are fundamentally possible and are not a sign of helplessness. They are democracy in practice,” he told the “Tagesspiegel”.

Trip to Mexico canceled: “There’s a lot going on here”

In this situation, Scholz has now been away for almost three days. The summit in Rio will be about fighting poverty, reforming international institutions such as the UN, IMF and World Bank, climate protection and of course the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East. On the sidelines, the Chancellor will hold bilateral talks, including with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Scholz actually wanted to travel further to Mexico on Tuesday evening, to the only Latin American G20 country that he has not yet visited in his almost three years in office. However, this part of the trip was canceled at short notice “due to the current situation” in order to “be back here in Berlin early,” as those around him said. “There’s a lot going on here.”

Decision by November 30th

Scholz will land back in Berlin on Wednesday morning. Then it should only be a matter of days before the decision on the K question is made. The party leadership will no longer wait until the party conference planned for January 11th. An “election victory conference” is planned for November 30th in Berlin, at which the candidate for chancellor will make his first major appearance.

A lot depends on Scholz himself. He had already declared himself the candidate for chancellor at his traditional summer press conference in July. “As chancellor, I will run to become chancellor again,” he said at the time. To make a change he would now have to back down. For a long time this was considered unthinkable.

Scholz opens the door a crack

In an interview with the “Süddeutsche Zeitung” published on Friday, Scholz opened the door at least a crack. When asked whether he could imagine reconsidering his candidacy under certain circumstances, he answered evasively. “Well, the circumstances of the next election are pretty clear,” he said. When asked what it would be like if the poll numbers worsened, he added: “The reliability of such surveys is manageable, as the last federal election showed, even if some people quickly forgot that.”

In fact, the polls could still play a role in deciding the K question in the next few days. In an Insa survey published on Saturday on behalf of “Bild am Sonntag”, the SPD gained one percentage point to 16 – but is still 16 points behind the Union with 32 percent.

Advice from Joe Biden in Rio?

In Rio, Scholz will meet someone who may be able to give him some advice: outgoing US President Joe Biden. The 81-year-old withdrew his candidacy for re-election in favor of his Vice President Kamala Harris after doubts about his fitness and massive public pressure. However, it didn’t help. Harris lost to Republican Donald Trump, who will return to the White House on January 20th.