Germany: SPD elects Andrea Nahles as new party leader
By
Peter Schwarz
25 April 2018
On April 22, a special congress of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) elected Andrea Nahles as the party’s new leader. She succeeds Martin Schulz, who had been elected 15 months earlier and resigned two months ago.
Although Nahles was supported by the entire party executive and had only a pro forma candidate standing against her—the largely unknown mayor of Flensburg, Simone Lange—she received just under two-thirds of delegates’ votes. It was the second worst result for such a vote in the history of the party. Only Oskar Lafontaine received fewer votes, when in 1995 he challenged and defeated the previous party leader Rudolf Scharping, who had the support of the party executive.
Nahles takes over the leadership of a party moving sharply to the right and in a process of profound decline. The SPD has been part of the federal government for 16 out of the last 20 years. It is responsible for massive tax cuts for the wealthy, cuts in social and public spending, the emergence of a huge low pay sector, and the return of the German army to international battlefields.
As a result, the number of its voters and members has halved. In 1998, 41 percent of the electorate voted for the SPD, compared to just 20.5 percent last autumn. According to current surveys the party is polling at 17 percent. The number of party members has dropped from 775,000, 20 years ago, to 440,000 today.
Consequently, there was much talk of “renewal” at the SPD congress, but Nahles’ biography and political history guarantee that the party will continue on its right-wing course. She is proof in person that the SPD cannot be “renewed.” The right-wing development of the SPD does not simply spring from the will of…