It was a “Robert Habeck week” this past. After the strong slap in Brandenburg, which made the Greens’ cheeks… red, and the resignation of their co-presidents Ricarda Lang and Omid Nuripour, suddenly a large part of the press, especially that which seems to “like” the green vice-chancellor and finance minister, began to attributes almost supernatural properties to it.

Habeck now reportedly has his way open to a radical overhaul of the party ahead of the federal election in September 2025.

The aim is to reverse the downward trend, but also to reaffirm the governing ability of the party. The first stop on this path will be the Greens conference in mid-November, where – as everything seems – the candidate for chancellor of the Greens will have to put aside any obstacles that his internal party opponents want to put in his way, mainly from the field of the Left, those who, after all, have still remained within the party walls.

A leading slightly greenish party

Slogans and principles of other eras of direct democracy and grassroots co-determination have now been erased from the relative planning of the 55-year-old chancellor’s communications sponsors. It is exclusively about a party cut and sewn according to its own priorities. Ironically one could speak of an imitation of Sarah Wagenknecht’s idea. For a greenish “Robert Habeck Alliance”.

Habeck himself seems rather flattered by all this. They certainly help him to overlook the fact that on the policy evaluation scale from -3 to +3 his percentage is negative (-0.8). He made sure to talk a lot these days and admit that mistakes have been made by the leadership and for that everyone bears responsibility, including himself of course. But he did it in a coquettish way, which the Swiss “Noye Zircher Zeitung” called lyrical. Only his own party had the courage to take painful decisions after the message of the ballot box. Which of course did not “hurt” him. One could say that he hastened to take this step in order to catch up with his one-time rival Analena Burbock, who in the previous elections had prevailed against him in the race for who will be the head of the green list and therefore a potential chancellor.

Today, after a rather ill-fated stint at the Foreign Office, Burbock is not the most likeable political figure in the country, and she no doubt knows it. Everything shows that she dreams of her future in some high position in an international organization. But that’s another story.

The scapegoats

The problem with Habeck is that his “apology” to the Green electorate looks extremely hypocritical. But that, one might say, is something that concerns him and his constituents. What is worth debating is where this euphoria about a “Habeck Alliance” comes from and whether it can be justified. The first objection has to do with the inelegant manner in which Lang and Nuripour were misrepresented.

Anyone who believes that the party’s tarnished image and poor election results are due to them and not the party’s top ministers and their own decisions and actions would have to be dangerously naive. And here, of course, the image of Habeck and Burbok plays the biggest role. This is the showcase, but also the head of the party, with a body that often seems paralyzed. The sacrifice of the rest of the two co-presidents looks like an attempt to appease, if not mislead, the public of the party, a section of which may even anger it. And here we are talking about the traditional and stable pool of voters, estimated at around 8%.

On the other hand, no matter how clean Habeck wants to appear now, no matter how much he bets on the short memory of the average German to forget his old blunders and new 180-degree reversals of positions during his tenure, some remember. After all, there are also the satirical shows on television, to which he has unwittingly made sure to provide rich material from time to time.

Substitute for the Liberals?

Logic certainly says that the vice-chancellor, seeing the Liberals’ depletion, believes that he could plunder their clientele. To replace them with a party of the affluent, but ecologically conscious, who want to feel elite and show it. But polls show that the Liberal public is largely abandoning them for indolence in the face of excessive demands from the Greens. So why should traditional liberal voters trust the Greens?

Leaning towards Christendom

For some months now it has been more than clear that the Greens are leaning towards the Christian Democrats. The latter seems to have secured the lead in the next elections and the experiment, which has already been tried in three federal states, could be tried at the national level as well. But these three governments are not doing well. And in the final analysis the conservatism of the Greens, which came from working with the Social Democrats and Liberals and cost them so much, will have to rise to an even higher level if they are to work with an “economy man” chancellor, Friedrich Merz. And the latter has shown that he will not be a very convenient negotiator in such a potential consul.

It is clear that the elevation to the leadership of Habeck and Burbok signaled the unconditional surrender of the Greens to the logic of communication. Who can forget those “sophisticated” photos of Hambeck barefoot and meditating on the beaches of the German North. For a party that seems incorrigible to insist that its poor run is not the fault of its positions, but those who do not understand them, it is normal for the theory that everything can be fixed with better communication to prevail. Best consultants and advertisers. Will this recipe prove savior or doom? The voter will again have the final say.