The slow decline of Germany's oldest political party
Why the SPD needs a rethink
Recently, someone here in the UK asked me what was going on with the SPD. Many Britons know Germany’s Social Democratic Party from history lessons where the SPD first appears as the pragmatist who builds the Weimar Republic and defends it against the communists, and then as a tragic heroine who courageously opposes the Nazis and perishes in the process. “And now?” asked the Brit. He said he's been reading so often lately that the party is in decline.
British politicians are also closely monitoring the SPD's situation. Its UK counterpiece, the Labour Party under Prime Minister Keir Starmer, is trying to draw its own lessons. Like the SPD, it is a governing party, but like the SPD, it is lagging behind a newer, right-wing party in the polls, which is increasingly outperforming it as the voice of workers. Reform UK is currently leading the polls with 34 percent, Far ahead of Labour with 25 percent, and the Conservatives with 15 percent.
Because many in the Labour Party refuse to accept this new reality, a Labour MP set out to explore the shocking case of a social democratic party elsewhere. Labour MP Jake Richards went on a “fact-finding trip” through Germany and found “uncanny and sort of haunting similarities between the SPD’s predicament and what might happen unless this government delivers.”
Richards also travelled to the former East Germany and discovered that the SPD was talking about topics that didn’t resonate with people. Former Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) “ran as a chancellor focused on the transition to a green economy, on growth, on housebuilding," he told his colleagues, warning: “their vote share essentially halved in four years.”
Richards argued it's important to robustly address issues like migration, social spending, and crime without being “sent off to Siberia” by one's own colleagues. Parties must address what their own constituents are demanding: “People aren’t wrong when they say that they’re worried about immigration. People aren’t wrong when they feel like the welfare state is not fair.”
The SPD case has become a cautionary tale, told across the English Channel and language barriers. From my chronological bird's eye view as a historian, the situation looks no less grim. The SPD plummeted to 13 percent in a poll earlier this week. What was described in the media as a “low” only becomes clear in its full scale when one looks further back.
The SPD is Germany’s oldest political party and can trace its roots back far into the 19th century. The last time it fell below its current polling level in an election was in 1887, almost 140 years ago. Back then, it won only 10 percent of the vote, but was on the rise. So, you could justifiably say we currently have the most unpopular SPD of all time.
It's hard to imagine that no one, especially within the SPD itself, is aware that this has long since ceased to be about poll numbers, but rather about the very existence of the party. And yet the self-destruction continues unperturbed. At the SPD party conference in late June, Alexander Schweitzer, the SPD Minister-President of Rhineland-Palatinate, described his party as the “democratic centre,” despite the fact that it is now only voted for by a small minority.
Because there's little else the deeply divided SPD can agree on at the moment, the party conference decided not to change its own course or at least begin a period of self-criticism, but to advocate for the preparation of proceedings to ban the rightwing AfD. Instead of working on itself, the SPD wants to ban the largest opposition party, which received almost twice as many votes in the aforementioned poll, with 24 percent. SPD leader Lars Klingbeil sees his "historic task" as fighting the competition legally, not as a matter of preserving the self-preservation of Germany's oldest party, for which he was entrusted with responsibility.
According to the regular poll ARD DeutschlandTrend, the top issue for voters remains by far “immigration/asylum”. Yet this wasn’t much of a topic at the party conference — although delegates nevertheless called for a reversal of some of the tougher asylum legislation, which was recently decided upon by the democratically elected Bundestag.
The zeitgeist has largely moved away from such positions. The SPD, the Greens, and the Left Party now share only slightly more than a third of the electorate between them.
Yet, with one decision after another, the SPD is detaching itself from the lives and thoughts of its former core voters, and it doesn't even realise it. Of course, there's room for left-wing politics on the party spectrum, just not in the “centre,” but rather on the left, where the Greens and The Left already hold their places. People warn that you can’t out-AfD the AfD, but doesn't the same apply to the left end of the political range? The SPD is no better at left-wing politics than explicitly left-wing parties that originated as such, specifically to provide alternatives to a then-centrist SPD.
If the SPD continues like this, it will destroy itself. Now, you could say that it doesn't matter. But it should to everyone who values democracy. When the SPD was still one of (West) Germany’s two major parties, it championed the interests of the “little man.” These included things like decent working conditions and wages, fairer access to educational opportunities, women's rights, and the dignity of work, regardless of the professional field and class.
Since 1949, the SPD has provided a socially softer touch to liberal economic policy and a modernising counterweight to the basic conservative consensus of (West) Germany. This was beneficial for democracy, as the tension between the SPD and the CDU/CSU compelled both parties to demonstrate political performance, exercise reason, and compete for voter support.
If the SPD gives up on itself—and that's looking very likely at the moment—it will also give up part of the successful model of the post-war German order. This seems to be more obvious from the outside than from within. Perhaps the SPD should send a few people on a fact-finding mission, too.
This article is a translated and lightly edited version of my column in the Berliner Zeitung this weekend.
Quite an alarming read Katja. I recall a commentator saying of the left wing of UK Labour that adherents focused upon the purity of the message rather than the acquisition or retention of power. I wonder if that has afflicted the SPD? Populists such as Reform UK and the AfD have an easy time, they can just say whatever pleases, rarely having to deliver. The constituents of Clacton have discovered that their Reform MP is not remotely interested in the dull life of a constituency MP. On countless councils throughout England the voters have discovered that a great many Reform UK councillors are simply not up to the job. It looks bleak for the SPD if the leadership do not survey the political landscape and learn. As I have said before banning the AfD isn’t the answer, their ideas won’t go away if the party does. Countering their arguments is the answer. Good read with my Sunday morning coffee Katja.
When I look at the chart from the German election poll, it looks like the “left” has split rather than shrunk. When you add the SPD, Grüne, and Linke together, the total is 36%, substantially more than either the CDU/CSU or AfD. Maybe I’m seeing it this way partly because I’m American and used to a two-party system. But it looks more like confusion or disorganization in the face of societal change, rather than a real shift to the right.