When the carol singers turn the corner at the opera house in Stuttgart, Caspar, Melchior and Balthasar trip over each other’s feet. “Get in line, you idiots,” calls her companion before the children line up on the stairs to the opera. As always, they bring good wishes for the new year at the Epiphany meeting of the Free Democrats. Party leader and Federal Finance Minister Christian Lindner listens to them, including the chanted warnings not to forget the poor and those without rights. It is not communicated whether the traffic light coalition goes through his head in view of the small stumbling blocks. Finally, the three partners in the coalition of convenience, which started out as a “progress coalition,” occasionally get in each other’s way.
The Epiphany rally of the FDP is the traditional start of the year for the Liberals. Wishing each other a Happy New Year may be particularly serious this time. Because for the FDP of all people, which believes in little more than the beneficial effects of growth, the traffic light has so far been a shrinking cure – measured by election results and polls. After 11.5 percent in the federal election, she is currently bobbing somewhere between six and seven percent in the federal government.
Keeping an eye on the five percent hurdle
The party has to contest four state elections this year: in Berlin, Bremen, Hesse and Bavaria. She keeps a close eye on the five percent hurdle: in Bavaria from below, in the other states from just above.
But nobody wants to let a mood of crisis arise this Friday in the round of the opera hall. Everyone is too happy that they no longer have to speak into an empty hall, as they did in Corona times. Michael Theurer, head of the Baden-Württemberg state FDP, is even happy about a “stronger federal FDP”. His state general secretary, Judith Skudelny, asks the audience: “Do you know what sets us apart from other parties? We are optimistic.” And the party leader says that even in a crisis you are not the object of fate, but can take your life into your own hands.
At this point, however, the reins of action were taken out of his hands for a few minutes on Friday. “We shall overcome,” sing activists from the upper tiers of the opera and unroll posters. “Climate collapse = economic collapse” is on one side, the demand for a speed limit on the other. “You won’t get into the hit parade with that,” comments Lindner on the song. They’re very welcome, he then adds, “but to be honest I’d prefer you glued on” with lots of glue, “because if you stick here you can’t bother anyone else”. The activists don’t do him any favors, but they bring him up to operating temperature.
Yes, for the Liberals this election year is also about attack. The only question is whether the optimistic FDP in the opera house sees their situation too magenta-pink, like the writing on their election posters. Secretary-General Bijan Djir-Sarai will say later in his speech: “The debates we are having in Germany must be in line with reality.” He leaves it open whether this also applies to the FDP’s debates about the FDP.
Berlin FDP should set the first exclamation mark of the year
After the four state elections in 2022 ended badly for the FDP – including a fatal season finale in Lower Saxony, where it was kicked out of the state parliament – a bit of an upswing would be welcome. This is also why Sebastian Czaja got a speech slot at the Epiphany meeting. As the top candidate of the Berlin FDP, he should set the first exclamation mark of the year. To be on the safe side, however, Czaja, in a suit and bright white sneakers, immediately reminds them that every election campaign is a task for the party as a whole.
Otherwise, he is also on the attack. Perpetrators like the New Year’s Eve rioters should only hear the “bang of the barred door in jail,” expropriations will never happen with the FDP, and they would never elect the Green Bettina Jarasch to the office of governing mayor.
Bettina Stark-Watzinger is also allowed to appear on Friday. As federal research minister, she has remained pale so far, although she is responsible for the party’s declared core issues: advancement, science, education. So maybe Stark-Watzinger is allowed to speak in Stuttgart in order to become more visible than she was before. But the main reason becomes clear three speakers later when Lindner talks about education policy in his speech.
Candy for the Minister of Education
With Stark-Watzinger’s appearance, he jokes, the audience witnessed the beginning of the budget deliberations. Finance Minister Lindner has just made it clear in a letter that his cabinet colleagues can start saving. On this day, however, he still has a New Year’s candy with him, at least for the Minister of Education: “We need an additional billion in education every year,” he announces. Money is tight, yes, but “this country should never save on the educational opportunities of children, adolescents and young adults”.
His coalition partners are unlikely to have anything against Lindner’s New Year’s idea of an education billion. On the other hand, the SPD and Greens are less likely to like other accents set by the party leader in the Stuttgart Opera. Lindner, tieless and aggressive, praises FDP Minister of Justice Marco Buschmann’s merits in corona policy and says that anyone who now wants to maintain measures with reference to other diseases is jeopardizing trust in the rule of law.
He calls it a “cute notion” that the FDP should only make proposals that fit the Greens – instead, the FDP should continue to make proposals “that fit with reality”. With regard to the government’s China strategy, for which the Green Foreign Minister is responsible, he warns “against naivety and an excess of ethical convictions”; not decoupling from China, but “sovereign protection of interests” is the order of the day.
And then there is the weak growth, the “creeping loss” of prosperity, which Lindner wants to answer with a “watershed in economic and financial policy”. The SPD and the Greens can probably imagine what that means for their spending needs. Lindner, however, is irritated that preferring to talk about distribution than about earning is “old text” from before the economic turning point. He thinks it’s also yesterday’s use of fracking or the storage of carbon dioxide only abroad. “The country now needs a technology freedom law,” he says. The subtext, allowing instead of banning, clearly goes to the Greens.
But apparently there is one physical state for the FDP that seems even more uncomfortable than the struggle with the SPD and the Greens: the opposition. That was never the goal of the Free Democrats, says Lindner. Because it is unsatisfactory to only be able to recite “party lyric” while others are leading the country in one direction. Instead, they would have to make the new year “the year of design”. Well then.