I do it for Berlin, for the SPD! You know, of course it is best for the SPD if the party relinquishes its leadership instead of keeping it, as would be possible according to Berlin's voters' will. Less is more, you know. I can stay in government as a senator, you know. I don't stick to anything, you know, the main thing is to be part of the government.

Franziska Giffey tells the most unlikely things in order to brush off obvious objections with a "you know". This is their rhetorical trick to make the degradation of their party look good. Even the mere request to explain the abstruse should seem like an imposition.

Where could the SPD be better off than under the wings of the CDU?

"You know" as a rhetorical gallop wants to tell the opponent: First make yourself aware of the state of affairs before you accuse me of not speaking on the basis of evidence. My idea of bringing the SPD under the wings of the CDU could not be more evident, Mr Zamperoni!

The day before yesterday, the "Tagesthemen" presenter caught a "know" several times. Won't you, he wanted to know from Giffey, also break an election promise if you throw the SPD's leadership to the wind despite a parliamentary majority of red-green-red? Giffey: "You know" etc. You are sacrificing the leadership of the SPD for your own political survival, aren't you? Giffey: "You know" etc. Now demote the SPD in order to appear with you in new splendour in three years, or how? Giffey: "So you know" etc.

The broadcaster ntv also had to put up with Giffey's "Do you know". When asked whether things shouldn't have been done differently earlier, Giffey points out: "You know, you can always say in retrospect that you would have been different or so on." And what would hurt her, she is asked further on ntv, if it would continue in the future with the CDU? "Oh, you know," said Giffey, "it's not an easy decision when you have the opportunity to keep the red town hall – and we would have that, there would be a parliamentary majority for a red-green-red alliance – then to decide that you give up the red town hall is a very serious decision for the SPD." Why on earth does Giffey expect her party to make such a decision?

The evidence assumptions shoot up in the social media, be it the consideration that in a two-party coalition after all, more posts for the SPD than in a three-party coalition up to the suspicion of corruption.

One remembers a saying: "Close the shop, you idiots"

Three tweets as examples: "Coalition gone, Red Town Hall gone, Franziska Giffey there. If those weren't three wrong answers, dear SPD," Christian Bangel posted. Michael Neuhaus also no longer knows on Twitter: "The SPD voluntarily becomes a junior partner of the CDU instead of providing the mayor itself & thus strengthens the blockade majority against its own chancellor in the Bundesrat. Either I don't understand the genius of this move or they've gone totally crazy." And Dietrich Herrmann ties in with a tweet from 2018, which became a saying at the time: "Close the shop, you idiots."

No matter how you look at it, you don't know anything exactly. Certainly, the Greens are not "capable of agreement" and the Left Party is currently splitting their party, according to the SPD's exploratory report. But where wouldn't politics go haywire? Only a familiar voice gives support in the silence of ignorance, shouting: Oh, you know, as if I, Franziska Giffey, did not know best what is best for me.