Red-red-green in the federal government: There used to be more of a signaling effect

There were times when red-red-green electoral successes in the states led to dreams at the federal level. For example, if you google “red red green signal for the federal government,” the first hit that comes up is an interview that Deutschlandfunk conducted in 2016 with the then taz editor-in-chief Georg Löwisch. On the radio he called the red-red-green state government that was forged in Berlin at the time “a signal for the federal government”.

If you scroll a little further, you will find similar voices from the political sphere from this time. Even from someone who, in retrospect, very few people will remember as the pioneer of a shift to the left: Sigmar Gabriel, as SPD leader, wrote in a guest article in Spiegel in the same year that “progressive parties and movements” must be “willing to form an alliance with one another and be able to govern with one another.” He received left-green support from people like Dietmar Bartsch and Anton Hofreiter.

Ten years later, despite the double success of the center-left in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Berlin, there is little sign of such visions. In the northeast, red-red-green is more of an emergency solution than a project, and in the federal capital, left-wing anti-Semitism problems are dampening the spirit of optimism even before the first exploratory talks.

Question from the federal parties to the left of center: Could red-red-green not now also become a power option after the federal election in 2029? The surveys don't show a majority for this at the moment, but if you specifically choose the one in which things are looking least bad, the gap is not insurmountable: At Forsa, the Greens, SPD and Left recently had a combined total of 42 percent - while 45 percent would be enough for a majority in the Bundestag.

But someone would have to want to do it first. Left leader Ines Schwerdtner fended off the question at a press conference on the election review on Monday. “I don’t need to think about anything else as long as the SPD continues to chain itself to a dying CDU,” she says. As long as “this federal government continues to be administered like this,” it is the left’s job to ensure protests. And that's why we're now calling for protests.

An hour later at a press conference for the Greens, their federal chairman Felix Banaszak didn't want to know anything about the signaling effect: "If I saw it correctly, yesterday there were two state elections with one result and next year other state elections will take place." They probably turned out differently again.

In doing so, the Greens are at least demonstrating a certain degree of consistency, because one of his predecessors, Realo Cem Özdemir, sounded like the party leader from the left wing in 2016. "We govern in different constellations in the countries. You can't speak of a signal every time," he said after the red-red-green election victory in Berlin.

The last hopes for a center-left alliance in the federal government lie, on the one hand, with the SPD chairmen Lars Klingbeil and Bärbel Bas. They ended their press conference on Monday so quickly that the taz couldn't even ask their red-red-green question.

On the other hand, fortunately there is also the Green Youth. Their co-chair Henriette Held used the term “Red-Red-Green” on Monday, at least in its shortened form, and told the taz: “So that R2G 2029 can be a real option in the federal government, the left-wing parties must now show one thing above all: that it is worth voting for them and that it makes a real difference when they govern.”

To do this, the SPD just needs to “pull itself together and understand that successful compromises cannot only be made with a union”. The Left must “get its anti-Semitism problem under control” and its own party must begin to “clearly identify distribution issues and place them at the center of its policy.”

So maybe there isn't that much missing from red-red-green in the federal government after all.