SPD: This showdown for black and red is tapping itself (opinion)

What a week – it is only on Monday. In the early morning, Philipp Türmer, head of the SPD party youth, made it clear for this: not and not with us. The black and red government could now become a tremor.

The JUSOS will become substantial improvements at the SPD membership vote, which begins this Tuesday. The rejection of the party growth was foreseeable, cannot surprise anyone and also has to be read as a hint with the roof battens to the architects of black and red.

First to Lars Klingbeil, who, as the party and parliamentary group leader, concentrated the fate of the comrades on his person. Ripped off right, but effective. As a result, he wanted to produce eye level with now Fast Chancellor Friedrich Merz in the negotiations in order to get as much as possible for the SPD. Quite with success.

As a potential means of pressure in the conversations, Klingbeil demonstratively in the field that a grand coalition was not an automatism, not least the base still had to lift or reduce the thumb via the contract. If Lars Klingbeil takes his own statements seriously, he has to respect the rejection of the Jusos, otherwise he would also devalue the instrument of the membership decision.

The SPD leadership himself struggled the showdown around black and red, so to a certain extent, by only making the vote to the last and decisive hurdle. If you let vote and want to be a member party, you must also expect a “no” to the coalition. However, the fact that General Secretary Matthias Miersch, qua office top speaker of the SPD, which Jusos and its chairman had warned as a precaution before a “game with the fire”, suspects that the party leadership was actually considered without an alternative – and was surprised by the rejection of the Jusos.

In doing so, the towerers made a threat that he had flown into weeks ago: “I could not agree with a coalition agreement with this content”, which “simply shaken it”, especially in the area of ​​migration and asylum. The Juso boss renewed this criticism on Monday morning and also referred to the financing reservation in the black and red contractual work-a “ticking time bomb”, said the Juso boss. After all, the unexplained financing question was already a construction error of the traffic light coalition.

With which we would be at Friedrich Merz, the fast chancellor who can trigger the Social Democrats without need at the last meters of government formation. Neither the reduction in income tax for small and medium-sized incomes was not fixed, the CDU leader let “Bild am Sonntag” know, nor the minimum lighter increase from 2026 at 15 euros. As a reason, Merz also led the financing reservation. This may be correct in the matter, but strategically a questionable maneuver.

Instead of pushing conciliatory tones or sending other Christian Democrats into the field to send a message to their own warehouse, Merz provides the Social Democrats one more reason to skeptically oppose his chancellery. The fact that his statements were seen as a provocation is not only evident from the displeasure of the Jusos. The left SPD wing around Tim Klüssendorf and Wiebke Esdar was also seriously irritated, Saarland’s Prime Minister Anke Rehlinger also shook her head.

The fact that Juso boss Türmer throws a political explosive device into the black-red government formation one day before the start of the member vote is of course just as intended and well-calculated. The head of the party youth obviously wants to force concessions under the greatest possible pressure that are not just cosmetic in nature. This presents the SPD top and the Union with a tricky challenge.

Whether the future coalition partners actually tire the agreed contract package again on a larger style? Questionable. Either way, the Jusos’s advance should ensure that the SPD membership vote-which bursts on the Easter vacation of many comrades-will be of new relevance. The rejection of the party youth should mobilize in one like the other direction. And, after all, make an honest result from as many voices as possible.