FDP after the election: A power struggle over Lindner's legacy?

Wolfgang Kubicki has had a night of ups and downs. Traditionally, he meets Christian Lindner at a bar after the federal election to celebrate the FDP 's results. This time, the two men could only toast to their constant efforts during the election campaign.

When Kubicki entered the FDP party headquarters on Monday morning, he was asked how the evening had been. "Look," said Kubicki, pointing to himself with a smile. Kubicki had actually announced his retirement from politics on Sunday evening. He would be 73 years old in a few days and no longer had the strength "to help the FDP in the next four years," Kubicki had said. But overnight, things changed. He was now "seriously considering" running for the new FDP leader, he said on Monday morning. Many supporters had contacted him and called him, he said.

Shortly before Kubicki's resignation, another name had become known, behind which several liberals had rallied: Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann . On Monday morning, she did not rule out running for party chairmanship. The 66-year-old brings something with her that the rest of the FDP's prominent figures lack. She still has a mandate, unlike the members of the Bundestag, who all lost their office in the federal election. Strack-Zimmermann has been a member of the European Parliament since 2024. The next election will not take place until 2029, until then she can be presented in talk shows as chair of the EU Defense Committee. An office brings political gravitas, and an extra-parliamentary opposition party like the FDP can use that.

Kubicki or Strack-Zimmermann? So that is the situation in which Christian Lindner is leaving the FDP. "I do not want to intervene in the process of reorganization," said Lindner on Monday afternoon after discussing the disastrous result internally with Strack-Zimmermann, Kubicki and many other party members. He also did not want to give any public advice to potential successors. "I am not giving any tips at the moment."

Suddenly the FDP is without the political leadership of Christian Lindner. He has had a strong influence on the party's course, some liberals have been saying for some time: too strong. The day after the election, the reckoning with his eleven years as party chairman begins. The head of the Young Liberals (Julis), Franziska Brandmann, criticizes Lindner clearly without mentioning him by name. She sounds just like Olaf Scholz in his fiery dismissal speech, when he accused Lindner of doing various things wrong "too often." "Too often, tactical considerations have competed with the liberal compass," says party colleague Brandmann about the Lindner era. "Too often, internal power struggles have taken precedence over the well-being of the party as a whole. Too often, the FDP has put its credibility at risk - and lost it."

By joining the traffic light government in 2021, Lindner seemed to have led the FDP into the 21st century. The Liberals were open to coalitions with all democratic parties and were back in federal ministries. But the traffic light coalition did not work for the FDP. The party's poll ratings kept falling. Since May 2022, the FDP has lost every election. It was thrown out of four state parliaments during the coalition. Many Liberals increasingly felt alienated from the red-green coalition partners. The pressure to leave the traffic light coalition increased. Others, however, wanted to stay in the federal government and push through FDP projects. Lindner did not manage to resolve this conflict, or he did not want to.

The election campaign for the FDP began with the D-Day affair. Terms such as "open battle" scared off voters who wanted a different political style. The Liberals focused on economic reforms and a tougher migration policy. The FDP party conference even unanimously ruled out a coalition with the Greens. The FDP in the Bundestag even voted overwhelmingly together with the CDU/CSU and the AfD for a law that would stop family reunification for civil war refugees from Syria. But a fifth of the parliamentary group did not go along with Lindner's maneuver, an internal party revolt shortly before the federal election.

Christian Lindner turned 46 during the election campaign, and he could now be aiming for a second career in the private sector. He is considered to be well connected there, and he sends text messages to DAX executives. Before Lindner became a minister, he gave a lot of paid lectures.

During the election campaign he had already hinted that he could imagine a job that paid better than that of a politician. "In dark moments over the last ten years I have also thought: Oh, how would it be to have a career with less hassle, more time and not necessarily less income," he told RTL . In a YouTube show he once stated that he currently earns "around 6000 euros net a month". He hopes that this will be significantly more in the future, even though he said on Monday afternoon that he "has no concrete plans at the moment". Lindner seemed to be concerned about his income in comparison to others, and he addressed this publicly in TV interviews. He accused the RTL presenter: "You earn a lot more money than I do." He told the YouTubers: "I would guess that you earn ten times more money a month than I do." A lot is about to change for Lindner in his private life too: he and his wife are expecting a child.