What do you expect from covering Nirvana? Do you want to reanimate an attitude to life that has no chance of survival in the present anyway? Or is it just about “punking up” his honesty? In “Inas Nacht” a few weeks ago, Lars Klingbeil played the iconic riff from “Smells Like Teen Spirit”. He scraped it down with an even expression, as if he were removing leftover food from a pan. Yesterday he reeled off his rambling political statements in a similarly dispassionate manner. “We live in incredibly turbulent times,” he repeated three times and delivered platitudes on tape like: “I work every day to make things better.” Maybe that’s how you talk when you spend a lot of time with Olaf Scholz. But will that save the SPD? And does that help Germany?
Caren Miosga’s guests were:
• Lars Klingbeil, SPD chairman
• Helene Bubrowski, deputy editor-in-chief of Table.Briefings
• Moritz Schularick, President of the Kiel Institute for the World Economy
Caren Miosga made it clear from the start that “the youngest leader of the oldest party in Europe” (Klingbeil about himself) would not get a nice guy bonus. She slammed the controversial statement made by SPD parliamentary group leader Rolf Mützenich in the Bundestag debate last week, in which there was talk of “freezing” the war in Ukraine. To do this, she displayed a map of Ukraine and made it clear how many millions of Ukrainians would come under permanent Russian rule as a result of such a “freeze”. Would he adopt this statement? She asked once, twice. Klingbeil twisted and branched out.
Of course the SPD would still be on Ukraine’s side, there would be no doubt about that. But one should not narrow discourses either. Miosga followed up with a clip from Russian state television. Putin with the coldness of the aggressor: “To negotiate now just because Ukraine is running out of ammunition is somehow ridiculous.” Even that didn’t cause Klingbeil to move away from the Kremlin cozyers in his party. Miosga delved further into whether positioning itself as a peace party should give the SPD a better starting position in the upcoming elections in the Putin-friendly East. “Olaf Scholz,” Klingbeil replied, “decides things based on principles, not election dates.” That’s what a Secretary General talks about, which he once was. No chairman.
Miosga finally said, visibly annoyed, that she wouldn’t ask anymore about the non-delivery of the Taurus rockets. She heard so many different reasons from the Chancellor – “and you certainly won’t tell me the real one.” Instead, she wanted to know who Scholz would repeatedly write the formula “You’ll Never Walk Alone” in his speeches. That’s not credible for someone who doesn’t exactly have strong feelings. Klingbeil again took a long shot (“The message of this song is that we have to show unity”) and at the end surprised people with quite a flutter: The song would also be sung at FC St. Pauli, “so I think it’s authentic if a chancellor from Hamburg says that.”
The SPD has been in power since 1998, with the exception of four years. Labor Minister Hubertus Heil has just presented a draft pension package in which the pension level of 48 percent is to be permanently enshrined in law. The only question is: How should this be financed given the demographic development? “You cannot override economic logic by decree,” said economist Moritz Schularick. Pension subsidies would already burden the federal budget with around 120 billion euros – money that would be missing elsewhere. For example in the defense budget. “The special assets will be gone after the next budget, but the threat will not be.”
The journalist Helene Bubrowski also sees the Social Democrats facing painful realizations of reality. And calls for movement in her retirement position. For “social peace” it is important that parties repeatedly make decisions that go against their own convictions. Like the CDU on the nuclear phase-out or the Greens on the issue of arms deliveries.
How should a modern social democratic party be structured? Caren Miosga asked at the end – not Lars Klingbeil, but the economist Schularick. “It always seems like we want to go back to the 1970s and 1980s, where we all cook steel and assemble cars on Mondays,” he replied. He called for a “software update in the minds.” Because: “We don’t have to look at what made us strong yesterday, but rather what will be the growth of tomorrow.”
