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The ruling mayor of Berlin, Michael Müller, delivered his farewell speech as SPD state chairman at the conference of the party of Social Democrats in Berlin. Müller called on his party to be more self-confident and confident heading into the 2021 election year. The SPD must show a “clear stance” and make its own positions visible, then it will again be successful in the elections, he said on Friday in the state party conference online.
The SPD represents social justice and has accomplished much here in recent years, such as free education, rent caps, and equality. “That is our job, that is our main competence,” says Müller. The party must think about this in the upcoming election campaigns for the House of Representatives and the elections to the Federal Parliament in 2021 and continue on this path. “It is important to me that the Red City Council remains red,” said Müller, who currently heads a red-red-green Senate and is running for the Bundestag in 2021.
Müller has been the mayor of Berlin for six years. For twelve and a half years he was president of the Berlin SPD, the longest term for an SPD president in post-war history.
At the party congress, the Berlin SPD wants to elect Federal Family Minister Franziska Giffey and the leader of the parliamentary group Raed Saleh for the new dual leadership. The party congress must be interrupted at night for the election of the ballot boxes in the district offices. The results of the elections will be counted and announced on Saturday morning. For the future the Berlin SPD wanted unity, Müller said: “Support Franziska and Raed as much as me.”
Müller calls the grand coalition “unbearable”
In his farewell speech as party leader, Müller made it clear that he considers the grand coalition with the CDU and CSU in the federal government to be an outdated model. “I think we have to get out of this corner of GroKo,” he said. “Finally we must make it clear that we also have other options at the federal level and that we want to use them.” The cooperation with the CDU and the CSU is now “unbearable”. In terms of rental and housing policy and refugee policy, the Union pursues completely different objectives than the SPD.
“The rental coverage issue is not an oversight, but the rental coverage issue, which is important to us,” Müller said of the unique model so far that has been in operation in Berlin for five years since February. The project is controversial and there will be legal disputes. “But I want to make one thing very clear here: even if you lose that argument, we will come up with something else,” Müller said. “Because one thing is very clear: our fight for tenants continues.”
The party’s newly appointed leaders, Giffey and Saleh, are supposed to pull the party out of a low vote and lead a new force. Above all, Giffey, who was mayor of Berlin’s Neukölln district until her move to the Federal Cabinet in 2018, is seen as a bearer of hope. It has been agreed that she will also be the top candidate for the elections to the House of Representatives. However, politics loaded the issue of possible plagiarism in his doctoral thesis.
