For Markus Söder (CSU), the matter is clear: As Prime Minister, he said on Friday evening at the CSU Epiphany meeting in the Augustiner-Keller, you are in German competition, and if there is a city that is always at the top of the rankings, then it is the Munich. Why is Munich so successful? “Because Munich is in Bavaria.” That was well received by his party friends in the packed ballroom.
Bernhard Loos, member of the Bundestag from the north of Munich, announced that the meeting should be the start of the year and a direction for Bavaria. It should “show a clear course and offer orientation”. The full hall gives “strength for this strenuous new year,” said Munich CSU boss Georg Eisenreich. The surveys confirmed that the people in Bavaria wanted a CSU-led government – that was Söder’s merit, for the state election one was therefore “well positioned”.
According to Eisenreich, you can tell how times have changed by what you look at first thing in the morning. In 2020 and 2021 it was the corona numbers for him; now it is the filling levels of the gas storage tanks. Not everything that federal politicians are doing to combat the energy crisis is bad, “but far too little is really good.” He doesn’t expect the government to solve all the problems immediately, but it adds to them “for ideological reasons”. This is also the case in Munich City Hall: “The SPD has lost its compass, and the Greens have never had one.”
The accusation of ideology, especially in the direction of the Greens, also ran through Prime Minister Söder’s speech. It sounded like this, for example: It’s not enough to be moral world champion if you’re actually in a relegation zone. Ideology is “at the moment the worst advisor for the future”. With his current favorite topic, the fight against the so-called wokeness, Söder got going. As unresolute as the traffic light is in solving the country’s problems, it is just as determined when it comes to social restructuring, with gender asterisks, vegan food, cannabis legalization and the cancellation of Winnetou. “We in Bavaria rely on white and blue instead of Woke.” Bavaria is a country that connects things that used to be opposites: “Laser and meat loaf, space travel and rosary beads, trendy and traditional.”