Sarah Wagenknecht, the most popular leftist in Germany, flirts with founding a new party. She is predicted to have great success with a program that could be described as "conservative socialism."
Few politicians in Germany are such a thorn in the side of both their party "comrades" and opponents as Sara Wagenknecht, writes Deutsche says.
The most popular politician of the German Left, by far, has been out of "party discipline" for a long time. It is too radical and politically incorrect for the party leadership. For her, on the other hand, that leadership is too busy with climate policy and woke topics, so it forgets about the workers and classic voters of the Left.
In the elections two years ago, the left literally crawled into the parliament - it fell short of the required five percent, but it entered the Bundestag, because it won three direct parliamentary mandates. This is the minimum that allowed the party to be represented in the percentage it won.
There is no sign of recovery from the sudden return for which the leadership and Wagenknecht accuse each other - so much so that she has been flirting with the idea of founding a new party for a long time. Now the leaders of the Left have given an ultimatum to the popular MP to clarify her future.
For now - the marriage of accounts is still going on. Wagenknecht, who has a popular YouTube channel and writes bestsellers about the betrayal of the working class, is still in the party. And the party needs such a popular face before the elections for the European Parliament next year.
Further and further from the top of the party
Fantasies were also ignited by a research by the Civey Institute at the end of July. There, as many as twenty percent of Germans said that "in principle, they can imagine" voting for a new party founded by Sara Wagenknecht.
The "peace campaign" and the petition that she started for the end of the war in Ukraine brought her new accusations and new popularity last year. Although he opposes Russia's policy of conquest, Wagenknecht demands that the West stop arming Kiev.
Back in 2014, Wagenknecht pointed out the "hypocrisy" of those in the West who reject the annexation of Crimea, but participated in the bombing of the FR Yugoslavia in 1999 and recognized the independence of Kosovo.
Lately, she has criticized her party mates for becoming "lifestyle leftists" who care only about marginalized groups - refugees, sexual minorities - instead of the ordinary working man.
Paradoxically, Wagenknecht on the left often takes similar positions to the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD), which has experienced a renaissance in opinion polls in recent months. AfD has the support of 21 percent of voters - more than any party in the ruling coalition of Social Democrats, Greens and Liberals.
It also attracts conservatives.
The Insa Institute recently published a poll according to which Sarah Wagenknecht's hypothetical party would win the elections in her home state of Thuringia with 25 percent of the vote. In that eastern province, where the Left is normally strong, elections are next year. As things stand, the AfD could win there now.
It therefore sounded like a good joke when radical rightist Björn Hecke, head of the AfD in Thuringia, openly invited Wagenknecht to join his party. That doesn't occur to her.
But it shows who the right-wing is most afraid of, Sarah Wagenknecht's supporters argue. "She is the only democratic politician who could threaten Haecke," says Christian Ley, also a Left MP and a former assistant to Sara Wagenknecht.
Sara Wagner, a researcher at the University of Mannheim who dealt with the "Wagenknecht phenomenon", says the same. The popularity of that leftist, he says, attracts even the voters of the radical right.
"We see that people very strongly associate the issue of immigration with the words Wagenknecht," Wagner tells DW. "She also gets support from people who are conservative in principle - for example, who are critical of climate protection or against the rights of the LGBTQI community."
Conservative and social
Wagner says that the danger for the AfD lies primarily in the fact that their voters are not overly attached to the party - many choose it only out of protest against the ruling policy. "There are voters who are dissatisfied with democracy, conservatives." Many people are not very comfortable with voting for the AfD, but they don't see another party to choose from."
The analyst says that what Wagenknecht offers has not yet been attempted in the history of FR Germany. Namely – conservative social values united with socialist economic principles. "A significant number of people could identify with such a program," says Wagner.
Her research showed that what Wagenknecht advocates is more popular in the east of the country, in the former communist GDR. But, throughout Germany, it goes beyond the usual groups - it appeals to many, both old and young, men and women, members of various classes. And that is a potentially large pool of votes.
Wagenknecht announced that she will not make a final decision on leaving the party before the end of the year. If she did that, she would attract a good part of deputies, members and especially voters. That would completely ruin the Left.
Warming up in the European elections?
Sara Wagenknecht was born in 1969 in Jena (GDR), to an Iranian father and a German mother. Maltene spent her entire adult life as a member of the Left, a party that was created by the unification of Western leftists and the reformed United Socialist Party of Germany, which ruled in the GDR.
The famous leftist is married to Oscar Lafontaine (79), formerly the leader of the Social Democrats who left the party during the Gerhard Schröder era and joined the Left. It was the popularity of the married couple Lafontaine-Wagenknecht that guaranteed solid percentages for the Left for a long time.
But, dissatisfied with the party's policy, Lafontaine resigned from the Left last year. Will Wagenknecht follow now?
Observers believe that he will and that he already has a plan. The European elections next spring could be a good test for the new party, and then it would shoot big in the provincial elections next year. In all three eastern states, Brandenburg, Saxony and Thuringia, she would have an excellent chance.
The new party around Sara Wagenknecht could thus directly influence the shift in the balance of power in Germany, both on the left and on the right.
BG/Deutsch vele
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