You have to forgive each other a lot – and still try again together. The SPD and the Greens in Berlin have decided to join a red-green-red alliance with the Left Party.
There are still details to be clarified, some things can still happen, especially with these three, until the new coalition agreement is signed, but the directional decision has been made: a left-wing alliance should rule the German capital. Yes, keep it up.
But how? Even the start is accompanied by disruptions and unprofessionalism: from parts of the SPD that started on election day to make politics against their own top candidate. And from the Greens, who caused a scandal because they sent out the exploratory results by press release on Thursday before the SPD could announce it live. No, please don’t go on like this.
This start is all the more pessimistic as the left-wing alliance already bears three heavy burdens. First, many people were not satisfied with the work of the previous coalition – over 60 percent recently criticized the work of the government.
There are many reasons for this: The citizens’ offices work too poorly, the election was so badly organized that the election officer now wants to appeal herself, housing construction is stagnating, the mobility transition is going too slowly for many and the central political project was cleared away by the constitutional court with the rent cap.
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In the same group of parties, it is difficult to proclaim in any credible way that there is more than just reforms of the unpopular current situation. If the new coalition is to exist, it needs a great success right from the start.
The faux pas with the press release stands – secondly – for something fundamental: Unprofessionalism and resentment shaped the cooperation in the old coalition. Franziska Giffey, in particular, was affected in public during the election campaign: she was portrayed by members of the coalition partners as either a racist, a governess or a yesterday.
It’s not about love, but about indulgence
In the background, however, the SPD also distributed vigorously – especially in the direction of the Greens, whose favorite projects were cut off shortly before the end. Only to now, as if nothing had happened, to sit together again at the government table?
The new, old coalition has to find a completely new way of dealing with one another and has to be managed more professionally. How it works is demonstrated by Malu Dreyer in Rhineland-Palatinate and Winfried Kretschmann in Baden-Württemberg. It’s never about love in politics, but about indulgence.
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Third, Franziska Giffey starts with a credibility problem. Your blinking in the direction of a bourgeois coalition may have been wise, because it gave the SPD demands more weight and made it possible for some negotiations to be successful against self-confident Greens and leftists.
Giffey is now dependent on the implementation of their projects
However, many voted for the SPD precisely because Giffey seemed to be a bourgeois alternative. You will be disappointed. Whether Giffey is weakened right from the start depends on whether she can get through key election promises: an alliance for housing, video surveillance, the civil service for teachers.
Yes, a new beginning really looks different. One can regret that. And still have to accept that no other alliance would have had a stable majority. Now, keyword realism, a noticeably different Berlin reality has to turn from a government idea.
