Ricarda Lang with Caren Miosga: lots of words, lots of regrets

“I hope you don’t hold this against me,” says Caren Miosga, before playing a video by Ricarda Lang from March 2023. You can see it: The then leader of the Green Party, who wants to sell a political defeat as a success with bombastic words. Lang had just come from a 48-hour negotiation on the accelerated expansion of the motorway, which the FDP in particular wanted. Lang said: “In the future, not a kilometer of motorway should be built in Germany without this space also being used for renewable energies.” The Liberals got their highways, the Greens got a few solar systems next to them.

Lang, who gave up the party chairmanship a month ago, is now sitting in the studio with Miosga – and is already grinning sheepishly when the presenter asks her: “What’s it like to see that afterwards?” Lang replies: “Yes, embarrassing!” Today she is ashamed of “what I was saying to myself.”

When Ricarda Lang currently appears on talk shows, she practices self-flagellation. She now understands that it damages trust in democracy when politicians talk like robots. “We have to stop talking in speech bubbles,” says Lang.

She receives support at the discussion table from ex-Finance Minister Peer Steinbrück (SPD), who is known for controversial statements: He gave the SZ magazine the middle finger during the 2013 election campaign and he once called his party friends “crybabies”. Steinbrück says: “These statements were plain language, but they all blew up in my face.” Today politicians would hardly speak out about “unpleasant truths” for fear of the next shitstorm.

At Miosga, Lang even wants a time machine. “What would actually have happened if I had talked more about what was actually going on in this country?” asks the former Green Party leader. “Maybe there would have been three nasty calls from the party, but I would also have spoken from the hearts of many people.” Lang has been saying something similar since she announced her retirement. She openly admits errors in her communication and receives a lot of applause for them – not least from moderator Miosga, who praises: “You speak so much more freely after your resignation.”

It’s not Miosga, but “Welt” journalist Robin Alexander who points out: It’s not just communication that counts, but also whether politicians can actually tackle the problems identified by the population. “People have the feeling that the political center cannot or does not want to solve the problem of migration. That is a dangerous impression.” If there is no progress here after the federal election, “there will be a different answer in four years.”

Now Miosga also wants to know about the issue of migration: “Is it more important that we stick with green DNA, or do we go a few steps further to prevent everything from going to the right?” Then Lang says something again that she might have formulated in a similar way a year ago: There are no “simple solutions” to this problem, and one should not “abolish the rule of law.” This is what the green party line sounds like.

“So you wouldn’t change anything about migration?” asks Miosga. “Yes,” Lang replies, we simply have to implement agreed European compromises now. At this point one may ask: How far will Lang’s commitment to openly address problems in the future go if she cannot present any innovative solutions to them?

At the end of the show, Alexander and Lang clash again. Lang says there’s something she can’t quite figure out yet: in the election campaign, all parties are highlighting differences and talking about “big directional decisions.” And later drop all that again in order to form coalitions through “complicated compromises” that hardly change anything.

Then Alexander interrupts her: “That’s the excuse that Olaf Scholz has been telling us for months as to why the traffic lights didn’t work!” An agreement on the traffic lights was hardly more difficult than in the last Merkel government with the ego men Horst Seehofer and Sigmar Gabriel. “Maybe the next government should actually do something different!” says Alexander.

Lang conciliatoryly admits: “It’s completely true that the next government won’t be able to just muddle through.” The only question that remains is what Ricarda Lang would do fundamentally differently than before – apart from using clearer language.