CSU General Secretary Blume: "Friedrich Merz will do the CDU good"

Mr. Blume, the CSU in Bavaria is 12 percentage points worse than last year, at 36 percent. What has to happen for it to remain a people’s party?

The trend for the CSU since the federal elections has been clearly upwards. We are more than ten percentage points above the national average, but are always linked to the national trend. In addition, Markus Söder is the most popular politician in Bavaria. But as a people’s party, we have to keep reinventing ourselves. Firstly, we must find a political home for everyone who thinks in a bourgeois manner and, to do this, overcome lines of conflict. Second: We will open our party even more to new groups. It goes without saying that people with a migration background who are best integrated in Germany should also and especially be with us. Third, we will make the party a digital people’s party, a digital platform for bourgeois politics.

The CDU has published a detailed analysis of its election defeat. Where is yours?

We have the best analysis there is: our basic tour, which the party leader and I do. Our basis is our seismograph. There is an oversized desire for pure CSU, which we will fulfill, also because we are no longer caught in the shackles of finding compromises in Berlin. At the same time, our members know that we cannot only address them in elections.

The CDU election analysis also refers to the unproductive taunts of the CSU towards its big sister, such as the efforts you are jointly responsible for recruiting online members in the CDU area as well.

Our campaign was never confrontational – after all, the CDU General Secretary was our first online member. We are happy about the response from all over Germany. You have to think about party work and memberships in a modern way.

Ironic statements from you and the party leader last year, which came down to the fact that Friedrich Merz was a man from the day before yesterday, were quite confrontational.

Now you’re exaggerating. The decisive factor is that we agree with Friedrich Merz and the CDU leadership on the essential points and will work together resolutely.

Merz recently said he wasn’t the conservative bone he was portrayed as by some. Do you share his self-assessment?

I am convinced that Friedrich Merz will do the CDU good. There is a longing for profile and unity, also with the CSU. With the CDU party conference, a jolt went through the Union. The fact that Ralph Brinkhaus is now proposing Friedrich Merz for the chairmanship of the parliamentary group is extremely respectable. He puts himself at the service of a maximally determined Union.

Does the CSU still know what pure CSU would be? A good six months ago you said that the Union should keep its hands off identity issues such as gender. Now it’s played very offensively. Change of heart or helplessness?

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