So now Patrick Graichen has to go, the man who was considered the architect of the energy transition and who was ultimately better known for the so-called “best man affair”. For Green Economics Minister Robert Habeck, a momentous step, but there is no alternative: new compliance violations have emerged that Graichen, consciously or unconsciously, committed.
It’s the right decision, the only decision. For many Greens, this is associated with great hope: the communicative new beginning. But the personal details of Graichen were only part of the problem in the communication chaos of the Greens in recent months.
It’s actually bigger and it’s deeper: Parts of the party and especially the parliamentary group still make politics primarily with a view to their core clientele. They want to grow, but they don’t understand that in order to get close to a twenty percent party, they have to act differently in terms of communication.
Get in the niche
Instead of daring to move further out of the niche, to move into the middle, they have been back into the niche at least since the demonstrations in Lützerath and the declaration of war by Fridays for Future. The Greens don’t like headwinds, especially not when they come from their own bubble.
So they communicate primarily to those who vote for them anyway: Approximately, you can see that well in the elections in the former Green stronghold of Bremen, around 12 percent of the population. It is the FDP’s strategy, but unlike the Liberals, it aims to become the “leading force of the centre-left”.
Habeck is a good communicator – but reaches his limits in office
Habeck has always understood that this will not work if he wants to implement his vision of the “Alliance Party”, as he calls it (one could also say People’s Party light).
But he, too, has reached his communicative limits in defending the Building Energy Act. Instead of going on the offensive, he grumbled in the daily news that trust in the coalition had been damaged.
After the criticism in the Graichen case, he returned to the agenda, saying he was experiencing “insinuations, insults, some lies” to prevent the decarbonization of the heat sector. He was “not willing to sacrifice people to give in to this campaign”.
That’s not the rhetoric you use to take away people’s fears – or to appeal to the middle. It is a language for the core constituency and officials. If Habeck and the Greens want to get back on the offensive, if they even want to think about running with a candidate for chancellor in the 2025 election, they have to change their communication. And fast.
