How do you decline a job you were never offered and never – officially at least – even sought?
Germany’s defence minister Boris Pistorius gave it a go on Thursday evening. In a video address to Social Democratic Party supporters he pledged his full support to Germany’s “outstanding” chancellor Olaf Scholz in advance of the likely early election in February.
“I will not be standing as a candidate for the office of federal chancellor, this is ... entirely my decision,” said Pistorius, ending speculation about his current political ambitions.
Chatter about Pistorius as a reserve chancellor began building shortly after he was parachuted in as a replacement defence minister in January 2023. He ignored the speculation and worked to implement Germany’s so-called “Zeitenwende” policy, announced by Scholz days after Russia invaded Ukraine, to arm Ukraine while rebuilding Germany’s own military capacity.
In the 18 months since, Pistorius has earned the respect of the troops and, judging by opinion polls, the wider public.
For months he has been Germany’s most popular politician, an opinion poll curiosity that, two weeks ago, became a demoscopic dilemma following the premature meltdown of the SPD’s three-way coalition with the Greens and liberal Free Democratic Party.
With an election anticipated in February, and the SPD flailing in third place in polls, idle talk of swapping out the SPD lead candidate became more insistent.
Most recent public television polls indicate that about 60 per cent of respondents thought Pistorius would be a strong chancellor candidate compared with 20 per cent for the incumbent Scholz.
By backing Scholz as the face of its looming campaign, a Hamburg SPD politician warned this week, the party was “running like lemmings into the abyss”.
For two weeks now Pistorius faced the same question wherever he went: do you want to run as the SPD’s chancellor candidate?
Rather than simply say “no”, he hedged his bets, saying on Monday: “One should never rule something out definitively, because the world turns so quickly.”
It took three more days of frantic backroom talks with the SPD party and parliamentary leadership for Pistorius to end a debate that, he conceded, had caused “irritation” and “uncertainty”.
“I didn’t initiate this debate, I didn’t want it and I didn’t put myself forward for anything,” he said. “We now have a joint responsibility to bring this debate to an end, because there is a lot at stake.”
Just how much is at stake was clear an hour before the video message went online. A new poll showed support for the SPD had fallen a further two points to 14 per cent.
“Olaf Scholz is a strong chancellor,” insisted Pistorius in the video, “and he is the right candidate for chancellor.”
Which prompts the question: why do so many party members, and voters, disagree? And what can the SPD do about it in the 92 days left before Germany’s likely federal election on February 23rd?
The SPD has never had an easy relationship with Scholz. As then chancellor Gerhard Schröder’s labour minister in 2003, Scholz was the face of the unpopular economic and welfare reforms credited with reviving the economy – and ending the SPD-Green coalition a year early in 2005.
When the SPD sought a new party leader in 2019, an increasingly influential leftist camp inside the party torpedoed the centrist-liberal Scholz’s candidacy.
They chose instead a little-known leadership duo who, two years later, asked Scholz to front their 2021 election campaign.
The personalised campaign built around Scholz saw the SPD come from behind to finish a narrow first on 25.7 per cent.
Three years later, like Schröder before him in 2005, Scholz is going back to the voters a year early – and, after three years of coalition infighting, as a much less popular figure.
Closing a 19-point gap to the centre-right Christian Democratic Union would be an unprecedented turnaround.
Running a short winter campaign will be a challenge for all parties – but particularly for the SPD. They are likely to lose at least half their 207 seats based on current polls, losses compounded by new parliamentary rules requiring a 15 per cent cut in the number of seats in the next Bundestag.
After a fortnight of self-inflicted insecurity, SPD leaders plan to nominate Scholz as their campaign lead next week.
Despite the uphill battle ahead, senior officials remain confident they can convince party grassroots – and, later, voters – that Scholz is still the better horse for the race.
It would have been impossible to juggle Pistorius on the campaign trail with Scholz still in the chancellery, they say, and only Scholz can tap into the so-called “chancellor bonus”.
They hope to highlight on the campaign trail, better than they manage in office, SPD achievements on more generous welfare and pensions.
While voters trust the CDU more to revive the German economy after two years in recession, the SPD hopes that voters are more in agreement with the cautious Scholz stance on Ukraine.
His refusal to allow German weapons strike into Russian territory contrasts with the stance of the centre-right CDU leader Friedrich Merz. He has supported giving Kyiv further equipment – and a freer hand to use it.
At an SPD campaign event on Friday in Berlin, Scholz urged supporters to go out and do more to convince voters of their party’s achievements in power – and on keeping peace in Europe.
“There are many people who are worried, who are scared about security and peace in Europe,” said Scholz, adding that these people “know full well which of these parties has committed itself to prudence”.
Despite the wide gap to the CDU, SPD officials insist the centre-right party and its leader are not unassailable.
In a direct head-to-head poll of Germans’ preferred chancellor, they point out, Scholz is just five points behind Merz – and gaining ground.
Though Germans choose parties, not chancellors, SPD strategists are confident that Merz, not known for his self-control, will be easy to needle on the campaign trail.
On the subject of needling, ex-chancellor Angela Merkel got in a dig in at Scholz, her former finance minister,.
Minutes after dismissing his own finance minister, FDP leader Christian Lindner, Scholz accused him on live television of “petty tactical manoeuvring”.
Promoting her new memoir, to be released on Tuesday, Merkel said that, in her experience as chancellor, it was “better to shout at the office wall than the German public”.
[ Angela Merkel saw Donald Trump as spellbound by autocratic leadersOpens in new window ]
Though real campaigning will only start in the new year, this election may be all over bar the shouting. Some 60 per cent of German voters, according to a Friday poll, have already decided they favour another CDU-led grand coalition with the SPD as junior partner. And that, political analysts say, will be the moment of Pistorius.
After standing aside in Thursday’s video, the 64-year-old defence minister is “the party soldier and the noble, decent person in the SPD”, suggested Prof Klaus Schubert, political scientist at the University of Münster.
“Scholz will not play a role in any grand coalition,” he predicted, “making Pistorius the party strongman in the future, regardless of who is SPD leader.”
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