Party conference in Berlin: Klingbeil conjures up the unity of the SPD

The coalition is in place, the government posts have been taken – the SPD is now electing new top staff at its party congress. General Secretary Klingbeil appeals in his application speech for the SPD chairmanship to the unity of the party.

In his application speech for the SPD chairmanship, General Secretary Lars Klingbeil called on the party to unity in order to make further electoral success possible. Election victories are possible and necessary, says Klingbeil at the SPD party conference in Berlin. To do this, however, it is important that the party also stands together when it provides the chancellor. “In the end we are an SPD.” He adds: “We are on the cusp of a social democratic decade.” Klingbeil accused the Union of programmatically “having stopped in the 1990s”.

Stay “in conversation with the people”

Previously, the outgoing SPD chairman Norbert Walter-Borjans had affirmed the status of the SPD as a people’s party and warned the Social Democrats not to lose ties with the citizens. The SPD won the federal election “because the people in the country know who is promoting ecological and economic renewal in such a way that it really serves everyone,” said Walter-Borjans at the party congress. The voters trusted the SPD “because we think the present and the future together,” he added. “If we want to deepen the newly won trust, then the SPD has to be a people’s party.” The social democracy must remain “in conversation with the people”.

When he took office two years ago, the party had “bitter defeats” behind it and had to listen to a lot of malicious comments, the 69-year-old recalled. Since then, a “new culture of togetherness” has been developed, both within the party leadership and between the SPD leadership and the party base. Today the SPD appears “uniformly”, said Walter-Borjans – this was an essential basis for the election success. This success will not be “a flash in the pan” as long as the SPD continues to take care of the needs and worries of the people in the country, said Walter-Borjans.

Boldly should be Secretary General

Two days after Olaf Scholz took office as Federal Chancellor, the Social Democrats want to elect a new party leadership. The previous Secretary General Klingbeil is to be appointed chairman, while co-chairwoman Saskia Esken is standing for re-election. The previous vice vice-president Kevin Kühnert is to become the new general secretary of the SPD. NRW state chief Thomas Kutschaty, in turn, should move up to the ranks of the party police.

The other members of the party executive committee are also newly elected. Because of the corona pandemic, the party congress is mainly taking place digitally, only a core team is on site in the City Cube in Berlin. The start of the party congress, which was actually scheduled for 10:00 a.m., was delayed by about half an hour.