SPD by election in Saxony-Anhalt: Everything in the gray area

The SPD is in a strange situation after the election in Saxony-Anhalt. German democracy, whose guardian the party sees itself even more than the CDU, is in its worst crisis since 1949. The success of the AfD is “a deep turning point for our democracy,” said SPD leader Bärbel Bas in the Willy Brandt House on Monday afternoon.

On the other hand, the SPD got away with it again. The worst, the downfall of the party in Saxony-Anhalt, has not happened. “We’re not celebrating our result,” says Bas. But somehow Bas and Lars Klingbeil are happy to have avoided debacles like those in Baden-Württemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate. Individual Social Democrats had already called for the top duo to resign.

On the one hand, according to Bas, the AfD success in Saxony-Anhalt is also “a clear signal to the SPD in the federal government” – i.e. against the unpopular austerity policy and the abolition of pensions at 63. The reform course will still be continued, “but not against the people”. “Yes, but” seems to be Bärbel Bas’s preferred answer at the moment.

An obvious reading of the chain of electoral defeats for the SPD is: Continuing to pursue austerity policies in the dinghy of the wavering Merz Union makes everything worse. Cansel Kiziltepe, head of the AfA working group, warned dpa on Monday that the “dismantling of the welfare state and poorly implemented reforms at the expense of employees are helping the AfD.” Kiziltepe is calling for a significant change of course “on pensions, health and working time reform”.

Manuela Schwesig, SPD Prime Minister in Schwerin, also openly opposes the course of Klingbeil and Bas when it comes to pensions at 63. She seems to have been successful in the election campaign in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. There will be elections on September 20th. And Schwesig is in the process of making up for an almost hopeless deficit against the AfD. The pension reform, said Armin Willingmann, SPD top candidate in Saxony-Anhalt, in the Willy Brandt House on Monday, was “a dominant topic” in Saxony-Anhalt. Because over 90 percent only have the statutory pension.

And now? Play opposition in the federal government? With the cuts in housing benefit and pensions at 63, a step backwards, even if that means trouble with the Union? Bas says he is “ready to talk” with Chancellor Merz on the subject of pensions. When it comes to cutting housing benefit, she indicates that the SPD parliamentary group is working on alternatives. Bas wants to “take longer working histories into account” when it comes to his pension. It doesn't get any more specific than that.

Because neither one nor the other is possible - they neither want to provoke the shaky Merz CDU nor can they overlook how unpopular the reforms are - the SPD has announced a need for discussion on pensions, household and care. The SPD leadership has a certain routine when it comes to staging political obscurity. Bas's clearest sentence marks the guard rail of the debate: "To plunge the federal government into chaos cannot be our goal."