Bielefeld
Henning Höne (35) is the new head of the NRW-FDP, but his election result is shockingly weak. He only got 54.4 percent.
The NRW-FDP has re-established its leadership eight months after the lost state election. The 35-year-old Henning Höne from Coesfeld succeeds Joachim Stamp (52) as head of the state party. The fact that Höne is controversial within the party is shown by the very weak election result. Only 208 delegates voted for him (54.5 percent), 157 (41.1 percent) voted no, 17 abstained. He accepted the election anyway.
Thus, in the NRW-FDP party and parliamentary group presidency are now again in one hand — as in the past with Christian Lindner. Although Höne achieved a surprisingly weak result, he now has a lot of power in purely formal terms.
Delegates took their frustration out on the frontrunners
In the run-up, the Young Liberals in particular had criticized Höne’s candidacy. From their point of view, the Münsterlander, who was parliamentary manager of the FDP parliamentary group during the time of the CDU-FDP coalition, does not stand for a new start after the election defeat. Apparently, many delegates in Bielefeld used the vote on the chairman to unload their election frustration on him. As a reminder, the Liberals plummeted to 5.9 percent of the vote in the May 2022 state election, down from 12.6 percent five years earlier. Only twelve FDP deputies sit in the NRW state parliament.
“A fatal signal,” it said on Saturday in Bielefeld after the election of the chairman. No one had expected this poor result for the new boss. The liberals in NRW had not experienced a situation like this for decades, it said.
Application speech did not convince many delegates
It is possible that Höne did not hit the tone of his application speech that the party congress wanted to hear. “We need someone who inspires and carries people along. We didn’t hear that today,” said Alexander Steffen, head of the Young Liberals. Höne still has a chance as chairman. “He has to do this work as a team and take all currents in the FDP with him. The party wants unity,” Steffen assured.
In his application, Höne promised better communication within the party. He also wants women in the FDP to become more visible. At the moment, their share of the members is just over 20 percent. Höne received the loudest applause when he criticized some of the activists in Lützerath and accused them of “violent left-wing extremism”. The Liberals could pass future elections with courage and optimism: “Liberal politics is good for double-digit results. We should not settle for less.”
For longer nuclear lifetime and domestic shale gas
Like federal party leader Christian Lindner, Höne advocates a “moderate extension” of the lifetime of nuclear power plants and also wants a discussion about domestic shale gas (fracking gas). It is “hypocritical” to buy this gas expensively in North America and at a much higher price. Höne and Lindner are promoting an “economic turning point” in which taxes are to be reduced, the energy supply secured, bureaucracy reduced and digitization promoted.
The retired NRW-FDP leader Joachim Stamp had sworn his party to an “orderly transition” before the election of his successor. The FDP quarrels after the Bundestagswal 2009, but also the problems of the NRW-SPD after the election defeat in 2017 are warning examples. The state party must now return to the “spirit of the hands-on party”. Stamp himself has taken on the task of special representative of the federal government for migration.
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