At a time when social problems are growing, the left in Germany has halved. Can she survive in the Bundestag?
It is true, what leading left-wing politicians like to emphasize, that the recent election debacle also offers the party an opportunity. Should Germany soon actually be under the control of a traffic light, then all the socio-political promises of the SPD election campaign would be subject to Christian Lindner’s acute reservation. Social justice as a growth and innovation project, something like that should probably come out of it. Even if the left sits in the Bundestag more as a fraction than as a parliamentary group, there should be enough opportunities to distinguish yourself as the last representative of the so-called common people. The possibility that this will sooner or later also be registered by the electorate is undoubtedly given – however, the Left Party has recently been quite good at letting its chances slip by.
At a time when the majority of Germans regularly cite the social issue as one of the most important political fields and when even the US President is launching social programs that Dietmar Bartsch and Janine Wissler can only dream of, the Left Party has managed to attract its electorate almost halved. In some eastern German states, where it was once a people’s party, it has even fallen behind the FDP. It is rarely elected by workers, the unemployed and the underpaid, i.e. by all those for whom it was founded.
The left urgently needs to clarify a few things: What does it want to stand for? Is it still a protest party or is it already a creative force to be taken seriously? Who does she want to fight for? And last but not least: with whom? Does she see her best-known figure, Sahra Wagenknecht, more as a comrade or as an inner-party opposition leader? If it does not find an answer to these questions soon, then the chances are dazzling that this parliamentary group on the left will be the last for the foreseeable future.