Maybe my expectations were a bit too high. But I thought that if the SPD co-chairman, Vice Chancellor and Federal Finance Minister announced a “keynote speech”, then the sun would darken, the Wannsee would part and Deutsche Bahn would suddenly report 97 percent punctuality.

If you take this as a benchmark, Lars Klingbeil’s audience in the capital city experienced neither miracles nor spontaneous healings yesterday afternoon in the Berlin branch of the Bertelsmann Group. But if you ignore a short excursion into the smallest diamonds (at some point in his 30-minute speech there was a brief discussion about “transfer withdrawal rates”), he was pleasantly vague for an SPD man – not just a concrete head.

These are the unreasonable demands on his comrades

“I want doors on“do,” it started off like a savior. A bridge builder, a trailblazer, a source of inspiration, a team player, a swimmer at the edge of the pool, a deer petter… please excuse me! I’m getting silly again. But after almost a year in black and red, it’s difficult for me to take political promises seriously on an ad hoc basis. However, I’m trying hard. Honestly. And Klingbeil certainly had surprises in his luggage, i.e. unreasonable demands on his comrades.

“We can no longer simply respond to every crisis with more money,” was one sentence. Or: “We will have to work more as a society.” Or, as popular as cold sores among top left wing comrades: “Work has to be worth it.” And then even: “Performance must be worth it.” My dear Scholli!

Top taxes? Up! Where else?

On the other hand, Klingbeil remained a staunch social democrat: He wants to reform the inheritance tax, tax high incomes and assets more heavily, stop spousal splitting, skim off excess profits from energy companies, and at this point you’ll probably notice: that sounds familiar. He remains suspicious of the rich, and he recommends more “local patriotism” to stupid companies.

By the way, he has a lot of things too not said, the door opener simply opened his shop of ideas. For example, whether we need conscription. Or where the recognized fat state itself could actually save money instead of always thinking about new sources of income or redistribution chimeras.

Unfortunately, I can’t tell you what will become of Klingbeil’s almost biblical signposts (I would almost like to call what I heard yesterday the “First Book of Lars”). Finally, yesterday, his coalition partner and Union Chancellor Friedrich Merz outlined delicate reform ideas in the neighboring Bundestag, which will be followed by impasto battle paintings – at least I hope so.

“2026 will demand courage from us”

Perhaps it is now left to the poor student assistants in the capital’s media to pile it all on top of each other, put it all through the faction chopping machines and distill the lowest common denominator of world revolution and reform.

Maybe something like: “The coalition agrees that a commission that has yet to be formed could present initial proposals by October to modernize the transfer withdrawal rates.”

Klingbeil also knew this: “2026 will require courage from us.” When I left the SPD leader behind me after about an hour, it was drizzling outside. The Berlin sun wasn’t visible, but it didn’t explode either. Everything remained calm at Wannsee. And my bus broke down. So everything was as usual at first.