Panorama „Caren Miosga“
“What kind of debate culture is in this country?” asks Lars Klingbeil, perplexed
Status: 18.03.2024 | Reading time: 4 minutes
Lars Klingbeil (SPD) visits Caren Miosga
Source: Claudius Pflug
At Caren Miosga, SPD leader Lars Klingbeil demonstratively stands on the side of Ukraine – and its parliamentary group leader Mützenich. The criticism of his Bundestag speech is a deliberate misinterpretation. Klingbeil expresses sharp criticism of the culture of debate in Germany.
After the most recent closed meeting of the SPD board, Lars Klingbeil spread optimism. The SPD leader explained that the party does not want to take part in the “black painting”, but is “proud of what we have achieved together as a country”. Meanwhile, his party benefits less from the supposedly rosy conditions. In the surveys, the Social Democrats are languishing at 15 percent across all institutions.
In her seventh broadcast, Caren Miosga welcomed the SPD party leader to the pointed question: “What else does the SPD need for, Mr. Klingbeil?” After the individual conversation, the ARD presenter expanded the group to include journalist Helene Bubrowksi and Moritz Schularick, President of the Kiel Institute for global economy.
Lars Klingbeil admitted that his job was “incredibly tiring,” but at the same time he felt it was an “incredible privilege to be the youngest chairman of Europe’s oldest democratic party.” When he moves around the country, he often has to explain Chancellor Olaf Scholz and federal politics in general. He assessed the first year of the traffic light government as positive with regard to the gas crisis and inflation. It was only with the Building Energy Act and basic child welfare that a “huge dispute” arose, which “confused” people and “cost their trust”. However, the SPD politician assured that he is working every day to improve the work of the three-party alliance.
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The Chancellor neither explains things “correctly” nor keeps his promises, complained Helene Bubrowksi, deputy editor-in-chief of the “Table Media” platform. Scholz gave the population a “calming pill” by promising that “everything will be fine in this country, you don’t have to worry,” but this has now lost its effect. Instead, people would get the impression that he was “simply not telling the pure truth.” This creates “even more uncertainty” in this country because people “can live better with a serious and bad truth than with an untruth,” said Bubrowski.
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Demographic change is part of the unspoken reality. For Bubrowksi, it is “precisely the task of the SPD” to reform the social system, make it future-proof and explain it to its “own clientele”. Instead, Olaf Scholz announced that he would stabilize pension levels in the long term, which he “of course cannot promise in reality”. “We have to find other ways of financing – today rather than tomorrow,” agreed Moritz Schularick in the criticism. It is “not a sustainable policy” to declare pensions secure. The additional generational capital set out in Pension Package II was “in principle a good idea, but just a drop in the ocean,” said the economist.
“There is no doubt about where the SPD and the federal government stand”
In addition to pension policy, Miosga paid particular attention to the role of the Social Democrats in supporting Ukraine. “There is no doubt about where the SPD and the federal government stand: on the side of Ukraine,” assured Klingbeil. Both his party and the traffic light have come a long way since the beginning of the Russian invasion, for example in the form of the special fund. Thanks to Olaf Scholz, the invaded state has a “real” prospect of joining the EU. Nevertheless, the SPD chairman complained that he “sometimes has the impression that in discussions you are waiting for someone to say the wrong half-sentence,” and then yelling at them.”
Klingbeil referred the latter primarily to the criticism of the SPD parliamentary group leader Rolf Mützenich, who appealed to the Bundestag on Thursday to think about “how you can freeze a war and end it later”. The SPD chairman complained that his colleague’s speech was shortened and deliberately misinterpreted. Rather, Mützenich “spoke out very clearly in favor of arms deliveries” and in no way indicated that “we decide on the heads of the Ukrainians.” Nevertheless, the group leader would be addressed for his contribution to the legitimate question of how peace could be achieved. “What kind of debate culture is in this country?” asked Lars Klingbeil, perplexed.
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Moritz Schularick emphasized the importance of defense spending, which according to him must be well above the two percent target. He also insisted on a “dedicated growth agenda”, work incentives for pensioners and immigration in “our own economic interests”. With his call for a “strong state” and his questioning of the debt brake, Klingbeil, on the other hand, represents the “mirror image of this paralyzed republic”, in which one side declares social spending to be “sacrosanct” and the other declares the debt brake. For the economist, the “willingness to change” is now crucial in order not to end up as a “museum of wealth with a Christmas market and Wagner”. “Look forward, not at what once was.”