SPD parliamentary group elects party leader Lars Klingbeil as new chairman

Three days after the SPD's historic defeat in the federal election, the new parliamentary group elected party leader Lars Klingbeil as its chairman. The 47-year-old from Lower Saxony received 85.6 percent of the vote, significantly less than his predecessor Rolf Mützenich in three elections for parliamentary group leader since 2019 (94.7, 97.1 and 97.7).

Klingbeil is now the new strong man in the SPD and will lead his party into talks on forming a government with the Union. It is unclear whether he will remain parliamentary group leader after successful negotiations on a black-red coalition or whether he will then move to the new federal government - possibly as vice-chancellor.

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However, there is a competitor for this position: Defense Minister Boris Pistorius, who tops the list of Germany's most popular politicians in all polls.

The fact that Klingbeil is expanding his power after the SPD's crushing election defeat is controversial within the party. The Juso chairman Philipp Türmer sharply criticized the approach: "This approach created the fatal impression that one of the architects of the failure was the first reaction to grab the chairmanship of the parliamentary group," he recently told "Spiegel".

Former party strategist Matthias Machnig expressed similar views. He would have expected that the party leaders would put "thinking and self-reflection before actionism" in this situation. "Instead, Klingbeil used the political vacuum during the night to his advantage. That is a kind of self-empowerment or even Bonapartism." Bonapartism is an authoritarian form of rule, named after the French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte.

The SPD fell from 25.7 to 16.4 percent in the election and is now only the third strongest party behind the CDU/CSU and AfD. It is by far the worst result for Germany's oldest party in a federal election and even the worst result in national parliamentary elections in 138 years. The group has shrunk from 207 to 120 MPs.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) had already announced after the first projections that he would no longer have anything to do with the formation of the new government. Party leaders have also resigned in such situations. But Klingbeil did the opposite: he took the bull by the horns, claimed the chairmanship of the parliamentary group and secured the backing of the party presidium on the evening of the election. The next day he was unanimously nominated by the parliamentary group executive. The fact that he received less than 90 percent in the election is seen as a setback.

Klingbeil turned 47 on election day and has had a steep career in the party. He has been a member of the Bundestag since 2009, became general secretary of the party in 2017 and, after winning the federal election, party leader together with co-chair Saskia Esken in 2021. The last time the SPD combined party and parliamentary group leadership was in 2018/19, when Andrea Nahles held both posts. Her time at the top then came to an abrupt end: in June 2019, she resigned under great pressure from the parliamentary group after a disaster in the European elections.

Mützenich, 65, led the parliamentary group after Nahles for five years and five months. He justified his resignation from the parliamentary group chairmanship on election night by saying that "younger people should now pull the cart and the forces should be combined."

Mützenich expects his successor to lead the SPD into the talks with the Union about forming a government "with clear strength, with clear authority, with clear conviction." The SPD team for the exploratory talks is to be formed by Thursday at the latest.

RND/dpa/mos