No debate about candidacy
Klingbeil: “Scholz is Chancellor and will remain so”
May 9, 2024, 4:01 a.m
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In current surveys, the party is far away from the almost 26 percent that the SPD got in the last federal election. Is Olaf Scholz still the right candidate for chancellor in the next election campaign? Party leader Klingbeil sees no reason at all to doubt this.
The SPD parliamentary group leader Lars Klingbeil has firmly rejected personnel speculation in the SPD about the candidate for chancellor in 2025. “Olaf Scholz is the chancellor, and he remains so. And he will be our candidate again,” Klingbeil told the “Rheinische Post” when asked about personnel consequences after a possible poor performance of the SPD in the European elections.
The freestyle, recently announced by SPD General Secretary Kevin Kühnert, will take place in the summer of 2025, “because Olaf Scholz is leading this country through very challenging times. There is no time for election campaigns.” In current surveys for the European elections on June 9th, the SPD is only about half as strong as the CDU/CSU and is roughly on a par with the Greens and the AfD. In the latest RTL/n-tv trend barometer, Scholz is at 18 percent on the chancellor question, just ahead of Economics Minister Robert Habeck from the Greens. CDU leader Friedrich Merz comes to 23 percent.
Klingbeil defended the fact that Scholz used the term “peace” on SPD posters for the European elections. “There is no contradiction there. There can only be peace in Ukraine if Putin does not make any progress with his war of annihilation and Ukraine’s sovereignty remains guaranteed.” This requires further arms deliveries to Ukraine and accompanying diplomatic efforts. The SPD will not allow the concept of peace to be “taken away by the populists from BSW and AfD,” Klingbeil told the paper. “By peace they mean submission to Putin. Our concept of peace stands for freedom instead of oppression.”