Gregor Gysi Well, when Bodo Ramelow became minister president of Thuringia, we made gains in the subsequent election. In the election after that, however, we lost dramatically. That wasn’t because of him, but because of the attitude of our party. There was always the difficulty that he had the Greens and the SPD as partners, and they always had to be convinced, otherwise he wouldn’t get anywhere. After that, it was a minority government. That was also difficult.

But what did Bodo achieve? What I like is that Thuringia is the first federal state where primary school teachers earn the same as secondary school teachers. That doesn’t exist anywhere else in Germany. It looks like a small thing, but in reality, it’s a question of gender equality, because the majority of primary school teachers are women. That’s just one small step, but I can name many other steps that they have taken, which the new minister president can’t abolish. That means that if we are part of the government, we can set certain standards that won’t be broken.

We also had a good cultural senator in Berlin with Klaus Lederer. For all the criticisms you can make of him, what is happening now, for example, is a big difference to the time with us. The city is now cutting back on art and culture, cutting back on schools, cutting back on health care. You can save in many areas, but never in education, not in art and culture, not in health care, and not in the supply of water, energy, basic foodstuffs, etc.

The second thing is that our people, including those in government, understand that when tax revenues fall, you have to invest more and not less, like almost everyone else does. If you invest more, more money will flow in. That’s the simple logic that we have tried to explain to the federal government since 1990, but it’s been pointless. They keep making the same mistake because they don’t understand that a government is not a household. If I personally have less money, I have to think about what costs I can cut in order to make ends meet. But not with the federal government and not with the federal states. If I have less income, I have to invest, even incur debt if necessary, to boost the economy and people’s incomes.

So, what do we have to do? We always have to take certain steps in governments. What we can’t do is take a step in the right direction and then take a step in the wrong direction in another area. That is not possible — all steps must go in the right direction. They can be smaller than what we had in mind, but they must be in the right direction.