Activists opposed to renewal of grand coalition with CDU are looking to British grassroots movement for inspiration

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

Members of Germany’s Social Democratic party are turning to the Labour grassroots movement Momentum for advice on how to derail a coalition deal with Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union.

Delegates of Martin Schulz’s SPD gave a reluctant green light on Sunday to continue talks about renewing the GroKo (grand coalition) that has governed Germany for the past four years.

But the 440,000 members of the centre-left party could plunge the country into turmoil when they get a final vote on the coalition agreement next month.

Invigorated by the close-run result at the weekend, the people behind the #NoGroKo campaign are seeking inspiration from the tactics that helped Jeremy Corbyn to a surprise victory in the 2015 Labour leadership election.

Emma Rees, one of Momentum’s four founding members and its national coordinator until December, met SPD activists in Berlin on Monday and Tuesday, and took part in a panel debate at the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, a political foundation closely associated with the party.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Emma Rees: ‘My advice to the SPD is that fostering a sense of inclusivity makes strategic sense in the long run.’ Photograph: Andy Hall/The Observer

“The key lesson that I was able to offer is that people care about and want to participate in politics, if you let them,” she told the Guardian. “Politics as a spectator sport has lost traction with voters.”

Momentum’s head of digital communications also visited the German capital to hold a workshop with SPD activists at the end of last year.

Numerous speakers at the party summit in Bonn called on the SPD to draw inspiration from Labour, which bucked an overarching trend among European leftwing parties by increasing its share of the vote at the previous general election.

However, the Guardian understands that the SPD youth organisation, Young Socialists, remains cautious about being too closely associated with Momentum for fear that its tactics could widen the growing rift between the party’s base and leadership.



Senior SPD leaders warned that a campaign based on personality, such as Corbyn’s, would be difficult to recreate under Germany’s proportional voting system, and German voters already have a more overtly leftwing option in Die Linke, which won 9.2% of the vote at the election in September.

Kevin Kühnert, 28, the Young Socialists leader who has become the public face of the campaign to prevent a renewed grand coalition, received a standing ovation on Sunday for a speech in which he pleaded with delegates to vote against coalition talks, while holding out an olive branch to the leadership, emphasising his “pain” about the growing split in the SPD.

Kühnert was not among the young activists who met Rees in Berlin.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest SPD opponents of a coalition deal wear red hats in Bonn in reference to their ‘uprising of the dwarves’. Photograph: Sascha Schuermann/AFP/Getty Images

The youth wing has already announced a nationwide campaign to get members to sign up in order to influence the outcome of the membership vote, using the slogan “a tenner against the grand coalition”, referring to €10 (£8.80) being the cost of two months’ membership.

Frederick Cordes, the Young Socialists leader in North-Rhine Westphalia, told the Rheinische Post newspaper: “What matters now is that we bring as many GroKo opponents into the party as possible so we can blow up the result at the membership vote.”

SPD branches in a number of German states have reported significant rises in membership this week, with its North-Rhine Westphalia stronghold registering 520 applications on Monday alone.

Johannes Kahrs, a spokesman for the SPD’s liberal Seeheim circle of MPs, tweeted: “Allowing people to join for only two months in order to vote no is indecent. Joining and then leaving is nasty trickery.”

Johannes Kahrs (@kahrs) neumitgliederwerbung ist gut. mach ich selber.

menschen nur für 2 monate eintreten zu lassen um dagenzustimmen ist unanständig. eintreten und austreten ist üble trickserei.

schade.

Jusos kündigen Kampagne "Einen Zehner gegen die GroKo" an https://t.co/rKJBPxp3Su via @zeitonline

The SPD leadership is yet to confirm whether there will be a cut-off point after which new members will no longer be able to vote on the coalition deal. A spokesperson said a decision on the technicalities of the poll was expected at the start of next week.

Rees said: “My advice to the SPD would be that fostering a sense of inclusivity also makes strategic sense in the long run, as Labour saw at the general election. Especially for a party that wants to renew itself, like the SPD, that could be a valuable lesson.”