Austria’s Social Democratic Party (SPÖ) is currently determining its new leader. Over the past years, the SPÖ has failed to make political headway in the context of inflation, declining real wages, rising rents and impoverishment as the largest opposition party. Following the debacle in the 2023 Carinthian election, the SPÖ decided to hold a membership referendum on who should lead the party into the future.Pamela Rendi-Wagner is supported by the party establishment, apparatchiks, and most former chancellors. She stands for a chic, capital-friendly, state-managerial, technocratic and “more of the same” SPÖ, devoid of the party’s working-class and trade-unionist tradition. Her main rival Hans Peter Doskozil, on the other hand, wants to push the party more to the right, following the Danish social democratic model. Doskozil presents himself as an anti ...