AfD leader Jörg Meuthen does not want to run again as national spokesman at the upcoming party conference in December. The 60-year-old announced this in an internal email sent by the Süddeutsche Zeitung is present. Meuthen, who has been in office since summer 2015, writes of an “incredibly demanding” time as a federal spokesman, which was marked by “some hardships and disappointments”, but also by “a lot of good experiences”.
Meuthen writes that he “neither wants to fall silent nor cease my political work”, but rather to continue doing his political work. He does not write exactly what this should consist of. Meuthen has been a member of the European Parliament since 2017.
The conflicts within the AfD had worsened significantly in recent months. Meuthen wanted to distance himself from the right wing of the party and make the AfD capable of governing in the future.
Meuthen’s relationship with parliamentary group leaders Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla, who is also co-party leader, is considered extremely bad. Both are supported by the right in the AfD. After the AfD had achieved a weaker result in the federal election than four years ago, the differences in the party leadership came to light.
Meuthen, Weidel and Chrupalla were unable to agree on a uniform assessment of the election results in a joint press conference. There was a chill atmosphere between them. While Weidel did not want anyone to criticize the result, Meuthen criticized parts of the election program as too radical and said that the election had to be dealt with ruthlessly.
Chrupalla wants to compete again
A showdown between Meuthen and the right-wing camp was already expected for the party conference in Wiesbaden in December. By announcing that he will not even run, Meuthen anticipates a possible defeat at the party congress. In his email, he wrote to the delegates that they should “make a prudent choice and choose sensible board members”.
Co-party leader Chrupalla told the German press agency: “This is a personal decision by Jörg Meuthen.” He did not want to say who – should it stay with the dual leadership – from his point of view would be an option as co-chair. Chrupalla wants to compete again.
From the AfD you can hear that Chrupalla, who comes from Saxony, should be elected as a co-chairman from the West. In this context, weidel, the North Rhine-Westphalian AfD state chairman Rüdiger Lucassen and the Bavarian AfD top candidate in the federal elections, Peter Boehringer, are named.