SPD Chairmanship: Who calls for salvation?

For months it seemed as if Hubertus Heil constantly kept the window open, so that he would only not hear it when someone called for him. When Labour and Social Affairs Minister Bärbel Bas resigned, such a moment could have been. After all, Heil himself has been head of department in that house for many years. But the one who would have had to call him would have been the Vice Chancellor and SPD chairman, Lars Klingbeil. And the two Lower Saxony party friends are linked in long-standing rivalry, to say the least. Klingbeil preferred to appoint Alexander Schweitzer, who was voted out in the spring in Rhineland-Palatinate. So then party leader, maybe. He does not rule it out, said Heil now in the ARD. Because at the party congress in mid-January, not only a successor for Bas is to be elected, who has also resigned as SPD co-chairman (at this point it must be a woman again), but the entire double leadership. Old rival Klingbeils Admittedly, Klingbeil wants to compete again according to his own statement. But the approval of him was already manageable in his last re-election in June 2025, a receipt for the weak performance in the Bundestag election. And since then, things have continued to go downhill in both state elections and polls. But that of all things Heil, who has been bustling about in federal politics for two decades as a multiple SPD Secretary General and Minister, should stand for the departure of social democracy into a bright future, is at least in need of explanation. What distinguished him from Klingbeil, he could now not quite say on request. He did not want to run away from government responsibility. But he wants the SPD to be stronger and “recognizable”. But how about a left-wing coalition, as is now being sought in Berlin? The Berlin Left Party was questionable, said Heil, the one in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania reasonable, and overall one had to agree on a proper policy, otherwise nothing would go. Heil said it here not so explicitly: But also there he did not exclude anything – at least for after the next election.