SPD co-leader Esken renounces new candidacy for party chairmanship

SPD co-leader Saskia Esken does not want to run for the party leadership again. "I am now giving up my position as party leader and making room for renewal," said Esken on the ARD program "Bericht aus Berlin" on Sunday evening. The SPD will elect a new leadership at its national party conference at the end of June. Several SPD politicians paid tribute to Esken and criticized the way she was treated.

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“I have had the great pleasure of leading the SPD as party chairwoman over the past six years,” Esken continued in the interview. The 63-year-old from Calw in Baden-Württemberg had been at the helm of the party since 2019. At that time, she and Norbert Walter-Borjans had prevailed in a member survey against the later Chancellor Olaf Scholz and his duo partner Klara Geywitz.

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However, Esken has been repeatedly criticized from within her own ranks, and increasingly so in recent weeks. She herself has now said that she attributes this to the fact that "as a left-wing and somewhat fearless woman, I open my mouth when things are unfair in the country". In any case, she herself can “look back with great satisfaction on my last years at the head of the SPD”. Esken rejected accusations that her co-chair Lars Klingbeil had not supported her sufficiently.

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She has always had “support at my side”, she said, and has worked together with Klingbeil for a long time in various functions on a basis of trust. Esken justified her decision not to stand as a new candidate by saying that she wanted to make room for younger people. “We have many new faces in the party with whom we can represent our society as a whole in all its breadth,” said the SPD leader. “I want to make room for them to take on responsibility now”. This is especially true for young women. This is why she has “matured over the past few weeks” in her decision not to run again.

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With regard to the election of the new party leadership, Esken said that she was in favor of maintaining the dual leadership of the SPD in the future. This had “proven itself as a concept”. Esken intends to continue to hold her seat in the Bundestag. One of Esken's greatest achievements as party leader was working with Walter-Borjans to bring the SPD out of its low at the time, with poll ratings of around 15 percent. Two years after the new leadership duo took office, the SPD won the 2021 federal election with 25.7% of the vote. Scholz, for whom Esken and Walter-Borjans had paved the way to run for chancellor, became head of government.

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Walter-Borjans then renounced the party chairmanship. Esken then continued the duo together with the new chairman Klingbeil. In the early parliamentary elections in February, the SPD suffered a heavy defeat with only 16.4 percent of the vote. However, while Esken was heavily criticized as a result, her duo partner Klingbeil first secured the parliamentary group chairmanship and then the office of Federal Minister of Finance and Vice-Chancellor. It is assumed that Klingbeil will also hold on to the party chairmanship.

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When Klingbeil joined the government, the current Secretary General Matthias Miersch took over as party leader. Esken had clearly signaled that she could also imagine being a minister, but was not nominated by her party. Juso leader Philipp Türmer criticized the treatment of Esken by many in the SPD as “unfair”. Last week, Klingbeil also described the criticism of the co-chairwoman as “shameful” after a long period of restraint.

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Several SPD politicians paid tribute to Esken on Sunday for her decision not to run for party leader again. At the same time, they sharply criticized the way she has been treated within the party in recent months. "The attempt to make her the scapegoat for our miserable election result was not a glorious act and did not correspond to the basic values of the SPD either in terms of content or style of debate," SPD member of parliament Ralf Stegner told Handelsblatt.

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"With her move today, she is demonstrating a greatness and a sense of responsibility that I would have wished for from some of her critics in recent weeks," Türmer told the paper. Former health minister Karl Lauterbach wrote in the online service X that Esken had played a "significant role" in the SPD winning the 2021 federal election. "She also played a key role in negotiating the new coalition agreement. She deserves respect and thanks for her great achievement."