On Maneuvers
Opposition figures within the Social Democratic Party continue to undermine Pamela Rendi-Wagner's leadership
Servus!
It has been a bruising couple of weeks for the leader of the Social Democratic Party (SPÖ) Pamela Rendi-Wagner. As I covered last week, Rendi-Wagner suffered an embarrassing setback at the most recent party conference when, running unopposed, she was re-elected leader with only 75 percent of votes cast among party delegates. A quarter of delegates indicated, therefore, that they had no confidence in the former health minister, who ascended the throne in November 2018 when the party was at a low ebb.
Following the conference, the SPÖ has suffered a perceptible slide in public polling of between one and three percent. The party’s overall standing continues to hover somewhere between 22 and 26 percent: an improvement on the worst-ever result of 2019, but not enough of one perhaps. Asked about Rendi-Wagner specifically by the Standard, while respondents seemed to think she had had the right response to the coronavirus outbreak, her vision for the future and handle on the troubles and anxieties of the wider Austrian public were deemed far weaker.
As if that weren’t enough, her comrades are on maneuvers. A long-term thorn in Rendi-Wagner’s side has been Hans-Peter Doskozil, governor of the state of Burgenland. In spite of the fact that he has his own questions to answer about his leadership, specifically surrounding the collapse of Commerzialbank Mattersburg, Doskozil remains popular in Burgenland and a totem within the party. In January 2020, the SPÖ regained its absolute majority in Burgenland under Doskozil’s leadership, and polling published since shows the party gaining in popularity still.
It is often said that Doskozil represents the pragmatic or right-wing of the party, yet his politics are more like a kind of left-wing populism. In Burgenland, he has pursued a minimum wage policy for state employees, believing the priority is to make work pay rather than shrink the length of the working week. He also maintains a hardline on immigration far closer to the ÖVP’s position than that of his own party, and post-conference, Doskozil suggested the SPÖ should work with the ÖVP on a tougher asylum policy1.
In recent days, Doskozil has also brought another party bigwig out of the political wilderness: the man Rendi-Wagner replaced as SPÖ leader, former chancellor Christian Kern. Kern is advising Doskozil in Burgenland on economic policy, the pair have said, though Walter Müller sees something more underhanded in their cooperation. No one figure in the SPÖ is willing to challenge Rendi-Wagner’s leadership openly in the form of a leadership contest. What they are willing to do is slowly erode her leadership and heighten internal tensions in the party through media interventions, political alliances, and other dastardly maneuvers.
Kern is the keenest, sharpest analytical politician of his generation: a successor to former SPÖ leader and chancellor Franz Vranitzky in the sense of his managerial competence and what is perceived as a certain distance from those whom the SPÖ represents. The SPÖ must prepare for government, Kern said in an interview with the Kurier published Tuesday, and has enough time to do so. What it lacks is a vision for the future. We’re living through another version of the Roaring Twenties, Kern said, and the question of our time is how to harness this tremendous social and economic change for the benefit for all and not merely the one-percent. If Rendi-Wagner is looking for something on which to hang her party’s manifesto, Kern’s dilemma would be a fine place to start.
Bis bald!
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