“With me there will be no other way in Ukraine policy”: The SPD slaps Lars Klingbeil down

When is a speech actually powerful? It's hard to say, especially at a party conference. There's a lot of predictable, encouraging, combative language, and rarely anything dubiously personal. The SPD federal party conference, which kicked off on Friday at the City Cube in Eichkamp, ​​was no different.

Lars Klingbeil and Bärbel Bas, the party's new top duo, spoke first. Klingbeil wanted to be re-elected, while Bas wanted to win the mandate for the first time. The woman from Duisburg, as the new Minister of Labor and something of the party's social conscience, recalled the internal party disputes of the past week following the disastrous federal election.

Lars Klingbeil's fear of the Sigmar Gabriel moment

And she recalled with regret the way she dealt with her predecessor, Saskia Esken, the most prominent victim of the 16.4 percent on election night. "We have to do this completely differently," said Bas. "If we want to fight for solidarity, we have to show solidarity – otherwise no one will believe us." Later, Bas gave a brief insight into her inner life. "I asked myself: Do you really want to do this to yourself?" After a brief pause, she said: "I'm standing up here. So, quite clearly: Yes."

Lars Klingbeil tried a different approach. After the first few seconds of his speech, when he left enough pauses for applause but received none, he said, "You can feel the tension all the way up here, and believe me, I'm tense too." And then he got it, the applause. It lasted for just under a minute. Enthusiasm is different.

Lars Klingbeil's tension, perhaps even fear, was truly palpable. The political portal Politico called it the "fear of the Gabriel moment." Sigmar Gabriel was re-elected in 2015 without opposition, with only 74.3 percent approval, and has since been buried in the rich elephant graveyard of German social democracy.

SPD party conference: 95 percent for Bärbel Bas

And Klingbeil? He was predicted to receive what in political terms is an "honest result"—meaning not a particularly good one. In fact, with 64.9 percent, it turned out to be a really bad result.

Such a result would have reminded the delegates from Berlin, in particular, of similar disasters suffered by their former leaders Raed Saleh, Franziska Giffey, and Michael Müller in recent years, who were regularly thrashed by their own party members at party conferences. Knowing this, Kian Niroomand, district chairman from Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf, had previously hoped in an interview with the Berliner Zeitung that Klingbeil would not fare so badly. He was proven wrong. By comparison, two years ago, 85.6 percent of the delegates voted for the then-rookie Klingbeil.

And Bärbel Bas? Observers had previously predicted a rating of around 90 percent for the darling of the party's left wing – in the end, she achieved 95 percent approval. A more statement-making statement is impossible.

In any case, nothing could really hurt her that evening: not even the praise from FDP Vice President Wolfgang Kubicki, who had revealed himself to be an ardent supporter in Stern magazine. "If more Social Democrats were like Bärbel Bas, the party would be saved," said the FDP representative. She is reliable, straightforward, open, and down-to-earth, Kubicki said of the woman with whom he had worked until the very end in the Bundestag presidium.

Despite their political differences, the FDP representative stated that he and she had always gotten along well. "Anyone who treats Ms. Bas badly will have to deal with me." The delegates in the City Cube hall apparently felt the same way.

And Kubicki was right about something else. Bas would no longer be a great speaker—this was confirmed immediately at the party conference. In the end, it didn't matter; Bärbel Bas couldn't lose.

“There is always an alternative to war, but there is none to peace”

Just as Lars Klingbeil couldn't really win. Certainly, the unease of many contributed to Saskia Esken's departure after the election defeat – and he himself, as Vice Chancellor, Finance Minister, and party leader, claimed a rarely seen amount of power. Only he himself knows how credible he was when he said he felt responsibility for the poor performance in the federal election and had even considered resigning. In any case, Klingbeil said: "Either I quit or I assume full responsibility for the SPD." He chose the second option.

The unease about his power was certainly compounded by the criticism of many delegates of the party's rearmament policy. In his speech, Klingbeil himself addressed the "manifesto," in which former party grandees such as Rolf Mützenich, Erhard Eppler, and Ralf Stegner sought to prioritize diplomacy. "With me, there will be no other path in our party's Ukraine policy," said Klingbeil. "Vladimir Putin is not Mikhail Gorbachev. We must do everything today to protect ourselves from Putin's Russia."

Defense Minister Boris Pistorius and former party leader Martin Schulz supported Klingbeil. Both denied the Russian president any genuine interest in negotiations. They all encountered a certain skepticism, if not icy silence, from parts of the audience. Historical references to party icons like Willy Brandt and semi-icons like Helmut Schmidt, who had always known that the détente policy of their time was only possible on the basis of military strength, were of no help.

Stegner and his colleagues even refrained from submitting their own motion, and Mützenich didn't even appear. In his speech, Stegner recalled the SPD's legacy as a peace party, which had lost votes to right-wing and left-wing populists "because we left the field of war and peace to them."

Once he got into the swing of things, Stegner reported that he had been a grandfather for two weeks. He himself comes from a generation that had been fortunate enough to live in "peace and prosperity." Now he hopes that his children, and especially his grandchildren, will also have this same good fortune. At the end, he offered a slogan that was very reminiscent of the peace movement in the 1980s: "There is always an alternative to war; there is no alternative to peace."

The well-known grandparent scam clearly had a lasting effect in the hall. In one corner, activists from an initiative with the long name "Social Democrats for Diplomacy and De-escalation" had lined up in front of the television cameras. They wore red shirts with the slogan "Disarmament - Someday is Now!", glued black beards to their faces, and donned cardboard spiked helmets. They remained silent.

SPD against Klingbeil: “Prevent escalation of arms deliveries”

As it later emerged, the activists understand de-escalation to mean that the end of hostilities and the priority of a civilian conflict resolution must also be linked to the lifting of economic sanctions. In any case, "an escalation of arms deliveries must be prevented." As befits an appeal, the names of the initial signatories were also mentioned. Among them are none of the current federal politicians of note, but there are a few who had also signed Stegner's "manifesto."

Perhaps a word about Rolf Mützenich, the former parliamentary group leader. A story within the party goes like this: Mützenich ceded the parliamentary group chairmanship to Klingbeil after the election so that he, as the dual leader of both party and parliamentary group, could negotiate the coalition on an equal footing with CDU member Friedrich Merz.

Apparently, a kind of compensation was supposed to be that Mützenich would be given the prestigious chairmanship of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the Bundestag. But Klingbeil failed to keep his promises, and the position went to Armin Laschet of the CDU. Mützenich has been feeling a bit queasy ever since. And Lars Klingbeil received 64.9 percent of the vote.