As life returns to Berlin after the summer break, expectations are growing that Germany’s Left Party (Linke) won’t make it to Christmas.
For many, the main player in this curious case of political suicide is already clear: Sahra Wagenknecht.
The polarising 54-year-old is a hardline socialist, has been an MP for three decades and, for the last four years, has been at war with her own party.
Die Linke emerged in 2007 as an alliance between the post-communist successors to East Germany’s ruling party and leftist Social Democrats (SPD), disillusioned with their party’s economic and welfare reforms in power.
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No stranger to infighting, the party’s rows have become epic – and existential. Wagenknecht and her hardline colleagues accuse more pragmatic Linke politicians of pushing positions – on climate change, identity politics and immigration – at odds with the interests of their traditional leftist, working class voters.
The more pragmatic Linke MPs, meanwhile, say Wagenknecht and her far-left allies have adopted populist positions that increasingly overlap with the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) – what political scientists call the horseshoe effect.
Though she is an effective political communicator, not everyone likes what they hear when Wagenknecht speaks: she wants an end to sanctions against Russia and Syria, for Germany to leave Nato and a forced truce to end the war in Ukraine.
On Tuesday two things happened that may hasten the party’s end. First the Bild tabloid published a survey showing that Wagenknecht, with 43 per cent approval, is the country’s third-most popular politician.
As news of the poll spread, an emergency Linke front-bench phone conference was called, a last attempt to find candidates for its vacant Bundestag parliamentary party leadership duo. No one accepted the poisoned chalice on Tuesday and instead both camps reportedly repeated their increasingly irreconcilable positions.
“The future of the Linke is a future without Sahra Wagenknecht,” said Janine Wissler, a pragmatist party co-leader, urging her rival to “hand back her mandate”. Wagenknecht may retain her seat and form a new party instead, taking up to 10 of the party’s 39 MPs with her.
That would devastate the rump Linke: under Bundestag rules, even three departures would be enough to strip it of parliamentary party privileges, including public financing and chamber speaking time.
The party is already a shadow of its best self: after securing nearly 12 per cent of the vote and 76 seats in the 2009 election, support is down to half that now in polls.
For now, Wagenknecht has taken her time with her next move. In interviews she stakes out a gap she sees in Germany’s political landscape for old-school leftist politicians who should spend more effort tackling old-age poverty than welcoming immigrants who, she says, compete with the working class for low-paid work and scarce flats.
“I think many people are looking for a party that is in favour of economic sense, social justice, peace and freedom,” she said in a recent interview. Asked to define freedom, she suggested it required “a revolt against an intrusive state that wants to tell its citizens what they say, think, eat and how to heat”.
Linke rivals query her leftist credentials, saying they see her more often on television talkshows than in parliament, and that she earned €750,000 last year in speaking fees.
The end seems now less a question of if but when, with Wagenknecht reportedly aiming to have a new party up and running in time for the 2024 European elections and three eastern German state polls.
After Tuesday’s conference call, without a radical reversal of fortunes, it seems the Linke has no future with Wagenknecht, and no future without her.
