Lafontaine: This resignation is also a resignation

Lafontaine’s resignation proves the alienation from his party. The left has become more colourful, ecological and feminist, thinks Kerstin Palzer. The night of the former super-father will have consequences.

Oskar Lafontaine has left the Left Party. The party that he himself co-founded and was party chairman. This is not the decision of a 78-year-old politician who has grown weary, nor is it an event that only takes place at the regional level in Saarland, but it is a political drumbeat with effects on the left as a whole.

As bitter as it is for the incumbent leadership of the left, in surveys of who the most well-known figures on the left are, three names are usually mentioned: Gregor Gysi, Sahra Wagenknecht and Oskar Lafontaine.

“Oscar’s Baby”

Lafontaine not only co-founded this party, he significantly shaped it. He wanted a left-wing party for the “little man” and he founded it.

Lafontaine, so many possible voters still than the Viewing the figurehead of his party has long since been regarded internally as factotum, at least by the younger generation. This party hasn’t been “Oskar’s Baby” for a long time. New left generations are significantly less interested in the struggle of the working class than Lafontaine. The left has become more colourful, ecological and feminist. Above all, she is more divided.

Disappointed Lafontaine

His wife Sarah Wagenknecht’s book, in which she settles accounts with the lifestyle left in her own party, has only made the gap between the Lafontaine-Wagenknecht couple and a large part of the party clearer. Lafontaine has long been disappointed by his party, which has long since disobeyed him and made decisions that do not suit him. He calls it a “change of course.”

When he left the SPD in 2005, he started something new: “his” left. Now his exit from the left is just an afterthought. Because even if Lafontaine no longer held any offices nationwide, the radiance of his name is still there. And a man like Lafontaine is very aware of that.

The Overfather

With his exit immediately before the state elections in Saarland, he not only risks that the left in Saarland will fail at the five percent hurdle. By leaving, Lafontaine is rejecting his own party like a naughty child who now has to get along without its super father. One suspects that he would be happy if this child finally failed. And it is also conceivable that Lafontaine’s wife will now give the party the next kick. The left is currently in no shape to recover.