Applications for party conference: working groups against Klingbeil as SPD leader

The resistance in the SPD against Lars Klingbeil is growing. Several SPD working groups and the Jusos want to prevent him from becoming party leader again.

Berlin. According to a media report, several working groups in the SPD want to prevent Lars Klingbeil from running again for the party chairmanship. This emerges from two proposals for the SPD party conference in January, which “Spiegel” reports on.

The Working Group for Employment (AfA), the SPD Women, the AG 60+, the Working Group for Migration and Diversity, the Working Group for Education and the SPD Queer Working Group therefore support a motion that demands that the federal chairmanship of the SPD in the current situation should not be held at the same time as a ministerial office within the federal government.

Separation between party and government office

The SPD must strengthen its political independence, its programmatic credibility and its ability to act as a party of workers, the application states. “This requires a clear organizational and personnel separation between the leadership of the party and the exercise of government offices at the federal level in the current situation.”

In a similar motion, the SPD youth organization Jusos also advocates a separation of government positions in the black-red coalition and the party leadership - and for a woman as the sole chairwoman of the SPD. A “female individual leader” would be expressly welcomed.

Bärbel Bas announced her resignation as SPD leader and minister on October 12th. The Social Democrats want to re-elect their entire leadership at a party conference in January. Bas' co-boss Klingbeil has so far left open the possibility of running again; there are no official candidates for the position yet. Former Labor Minister Hubertus Heil is considered a possible successor. Manuela Schwesig, Prime Minister of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, is also seen as having good prospects for the dual leadership.