SPD Berlin: The alliance with the CDU means self-destruction

Well done Mrs Giffey. You are now Senator for Economic Affairs and no longer Governing Mayor. It just worked. It took three ballots to get your successor, Kai Wegner, into office. But that is soon forgotten.

But why Senator for Economics? So far you have had little to do with business, and you have never worked in a company. Okay, these are just small things. The main thing is that you are sitting somewhere in a nice office.

“Berlin needs me,” you said to Markus Lanz. uh yeah But for what?

Well, you don’t want to solve the urgent problems of this city. These are: housing, administration, transport and security. How do I get an affordable apartment? Why is my passport application not working? How is the city coping with the car avalanche? Is my neighborhood safe? These are the problems that concern Berliners, but you don’t bother with them, others do. You’re sitting in your new office, holding up nice graphs of economic growth for the cameras, which isn’t difficult. Berlin recently grew almost three times as fast as the Federal Republic.

You post a few little pictures on Instagram, babbling loudly when a microphone is held out to you. Complete. That’s how politics works. But you know that. Have you done this before?

But why you think you can score with SPD voters with economic issues is a mystery to me. So far, the comrades have hardly penetrated this field with their competence. That is unfair, because the Social Democrats do have capable economic experts, but hardly anyone votes for the SPD for these issues. It doesn’t fit the profile. No one would believe Porsche driver Christian Lindner if he suddenly praised the advantages of cargo bikes.

Bad election results

And does the Berlin SPD really need you, Ms. Giffey? I’m afraid not. Unless the party wants to continue down the path of self-destruction. Twice you got the worst result ever for the SPD in Berlin. 21.4 percent a year and a half ago, which you undercut this time with 18.4 percent. In your home district of Neukölln, you plummeted from 40.8 percent to 29.6 percent of the first votes and lost to a district politician. Human fishing is different.

The support in their own ranks is also dwindling. Anyone who, as head of state, only inspires a good half of the members to form a coalition will not be given much credit for anything else. The first calls to give up party office are already getting loud.

A power option beyond the CDU is also missing. Your tactics have alienated the Greens and the Left so much that nobody there wants to form a coalition with the SPD, at least not as long as you and your comrade-in-arms Raed Saleh are active there.

Politics is not a pony farm

Of course, I can also understand that you wanted out of the previous coalition. Red-green-red was exhausting. Constantly arguing with Bettina Jarasch from the Greens, who wasn’t available for your simple messages. Then there were the leftists, who regularly wanted to expropriate the housing associations. Very ugly. The headlines in the Bild newspaper also hit home; who wants to be called a “power burr” who “sticks to their chair”. Nobody likes to read.

But politics is not a pony farm. Kohl, Schröder, Merkel, Scholz also had to learn that, whoever is at the top has to endure a lot. The proximity to power leaves scratches, and Robert Habeck is currently feeling the same. Only: Nobody has to go into politics, the work is still voluntary, and anyone who wants to cook there has to endure the heat or leave. These are the rules.

And the Bild newspaper? Does one have to say a lot about this? A sheet that the top boss wants to use as a propaganda postille for the FDP? Social Democrats could seldom expect anything good from the Springer press. When the CDU in Hamburg lost more than four percentage points in the 2001 general election and ended up with 26.2 percent (the SPD remained stable at 36.6 percent), CDU top candidate Ole von Beust forged an alliance with the right-wing populist Ronald Schill. Hardly anyone was interested in the fact that a loser in the election was gaining power here. “voter will”? Don’t.

Berlin can benefit from black and red

That a Red-Green-Red government would have stuck in power and ignored the will of the electorate is nonsense. You just have to do a little math, which journalists don’t like to do. Red-Green-Red would have had 90 out of 150 mandates, Black-Red has only 86. Anyone who understands democracy in such a way that a government should represent the people as best as possible should have opted for Red-Green-Red, even if the work has become difficult were. But anyone can do it easily.

The new coalition does not have to be bad for the city. The new governing mayor, Kai Wegner, is clever. He, whom some in the CDU recently wanted to replace, has modernized at lightning speed, thrown off the jacket of the loutish conservative from the election campaign and donned the suit of a modern city politician. He brings experts from all camps into his part of the government and thus also appeals to voters who believe not only in the trinity of Konrad Adenauer, Helmut Kohl and Friedrich Merz. That’s good for the dusty politics of Berlin.

The coalition agreement isn’t bad either, at least based on what’s on paper. However, how the pretty plans are to be paid for, well, … let’s leave that.

But will the new government really be more stable than its predecessor? “Let’s see,” they say in Bavaria. In any case, the start failed. Anyone who needs three ballots to elect the governing mayor is not particularly reliable. Scars remain on both parties, especially on the Social Democrats.

The new coalition is devastating for the SPD. It has given up its own claim to power, split the membership base, lost its power options for the future and is led by two party leaders who hobble to the finish line. It seems as if you, Ms. Giffey, took the Youtuber Rezo as a model, but there is a misunderstanding. Rezo’s video was never about the destruction of the SPD in Berlin.

Well done Mrs Giffey.