January 16, 2024 - 1:15pm
Berlin
I set off this week from London to Berlin feeling apprehensive about what might await me in the German capital. Friends and family had warned that the public mood there had reached a dangerous tipping point. There was no telling if I’d even make it out of the airport as thousands of tractors brought the city to a standstill on Monday — the culmination of weeks of farmers’ protests. Railway workers and doctors have been on strike, and yesterday it was reported that Germany was the worst-performing major economy last year.
There is much hand-wringing in the corridors of power about all this upheaval, but nobody seems to have any idea what to do about it. Trust in the government has plummeted to unprecedented depths, with a new survey suggesting that only 17% of voters are still content with its progress. Now, early polls are suggesting that the party officially founded this month by dark horse Left-winger Sahra Wagenknecht has the potential to shake up German politics.
Published last week, the first representative survey including Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW) — so distinct are her politics, it’s no surprise that the party bears her name — as an option suggests that it would get 14% of the vote. That’s on a par with chancellor Olaf Scholz’s SPD and more than his coalition partners the Greens (12%) and the Free Liberals, who wouldn’t currently meet the required 5% hurdle to get into parliament. This result would make BSW the third-strongest party after the centre-right Christian Democrats (27%) and the Right-wing Alternative für Deutschland (AfD, 18%).
Having previously espoused communist ideas, Wagenknecht’s convictions have now evolved into something she calls “Left-wing conservatism”. She left her party Die Linke (“The Left”) last year in order to form her own, and BSW was founded by 44 members last week on a four-point programme consisting of “economic common sense”, “social justice”, “peace” and “freedom”.
While the creators of the new survey point out that the results may be slanted in favour of BSW because the wording of the question directly mentioned the new party, it would be a mistake to underestimate Wagenknecht. For one thing, her extensive personal support ensured that when she left Die Linke, nine other MPs followed suit. The party has all but imploded without her.
More importantly, Wagenknecht offers an attractive package for those who feel the Left-liberal policies of successive German governments aren’t working for them but who aren’t easily reconciled with the Right-wing policies of the AfD. BSW marries classic trade-unionist policies with a bullish “anti-woke” stance and conservative positions on immigration. When it comes to foreign policy, Wagenknecht argues that her Russia-sympathetic and anti-Nato outlook will address the energy crisis and bring peace. She also wants a smaller German military that stays out of international conflict.
It is as yet unclear how appealing this eclectic mix of policies will be to German voters once the dust has settled on the party’s foundation, and whether Wagenknecht will be able to establish a functioning local infrastructure. The sequence of upcoming elections will certainly provide an ideal runway for her party to take flight. BSW will first appear on the ballot paper for European elections in June, where the threshold to gain mandates is comparatively low. In the autumn, it will contest elections for the local parliaments of three of Germany’s eastern states, where discontent is high and Wagenknecht maintains her core support.
With a new Left-wing party joining the clamour for change, the political spectrum has splintered further just as anger continues to spill onto the streets and into the voting booths. Coalitions will become awkward to build and the country even more difficult to run amid overlapping crises. Whatever Wagenknecht’s chances of electoral success, she is set to contribute to making 2024 a real stress test for modern German democracy.
Katja Hoyer is a German-British historian and writer. She is the author, most recently, of Beyond the Wall: East Germany, 1949-1990.
hoyer_kat
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
SubscribeThis is a very promising development. I hope similar parties appear elsewhere, and I would be happy to help set up an Irish version.
During the 2016 presidential race in the US it was observed that there was a transfer of voters between socialist Bernie Sanders and Trump.
The traditional left/right political spectrum is no longer suitable to describe events in many western nations. We are now looking at a landscape where establishment liberals and the MSN are being challenged by everyone else.
We have to recognise that Trump isn’t just a right wing candidate. Why wouldn’t Bernie supporters favour bringing jobs back, protecting American industry and penalising human rights abusers abroad whilst withdrawing the US from imperialist projects. The left isn’t all gay trans woke whatever that the right-wing like to portray – some of it is actually left-wing thought.
Probably not that surprising. Trump is economically left wing, which is what Sanders supporters want. His signature economic policy was tariffs on China, he was anti-illegal immigration (good for working class wages), he was anti-war (another Sanders position).
He gets described as right wing because he ran on the Republican ticket, but he has little in common with classical small-government Republicanism. He’s really more “economically left, socially conservative” which is what opinion polls often suggest a lot of people want.
The combination of left-of-centre on economics and right-of-centre on immigration is simply tapping in to what a sizeable chunk of the electorate actually believes and wants. In Germany’s Northern neighbour, Denmark, the Socialdemokratiet party has already discovered this “magic formula” and has reaped electoral rewards.
But UK politicos don’t neeed to lose any sleep. It will never happen here.
It won’t? That was actually UKIP’s manifesto in 2019, socially conservative, economically redistributive.
It’s been some time (certainly in the liberal west) since a steady-as-she-goes politics has been a reality. I keep thinking things will settle down any day now, but the opposite seems to be the case.
When it comes to foreign policy, Wagenknecht argues that her Russia-sympathetic and anti-Nato outlook will address the energy crisis and bring peace. She also wants a smaller German military that stays out of international conflict.
Oh my God!
The Germans became a nation of eunuchs. Today only a woman eager to be raped can speak to a small military. They won’t ask you whether you want to stay out or not. They will come and get you. They’re already doing it
“They”?
“They” could be Putin, migrants, whatever. We are in a situation of instability and if a country in the center of Europe believes that it can have a small military and rely on so-called “international institutions”, one can only sympathize with it.
Si vis pacem, para bellum
Lates polls,(as of 16.1,) have Wagenknecht’s party still only at 3%, the AfD still at 22% , CDU/CSU at 31% and SPD only 13% and the Greens at 14%. As of now Wagenknecht’s Party will struggle to get into Parliament, so will the current coalition Party FDP, which still struggles around 4%.
Don’t know where the author gets her numbers from. The local elections in East Germany will be an eye opener this year, and it is anybody’s guess , if AfD will achieve 30%, in spite of established politicians falling over themselves to put the AfD into the Nazi corner. It nearly seems the more politicians condemn the party, the more it grows…
F*** that empty suit politician.
There’s no way a single party gets 51% of the vote. So she’ll either cross the bridge to make a coalition in AfD (a frozen cube’s chance in hell) or betray. That’s her role; She’s the system’s groomed traitor.
Maybe she knows it, and maybe she does not. Maybe she’ll do it willingfull and maybe her “advisors” will have to blackmail her.
But the end result is clear; In a choice between immigration and globalism AfD has a clear stance while she has the stance of those who always betrayed.
She favours less defence spending: in other words a parasite on NATO. Money, money, money – the cry of the modern German.
You didn’t miss the part where her anti-Nato stance was mentioned, did you?
It appears the reason why Europe can’t resolve anything; too many parties and too much compromise. Nothing can happen when a strong response is required.
I note that the AfD are now described as just a right wing party, not a far right party. Progress! It makes it much easier to focus on the contents of the report rather than get distracted by exaggerations.
Wagenknecht’s party sounds interesting, but I wonder how exactly she will reconcile left wing politics with concepts like economic common sense. Isn’t it normally conservatives who use language like that? And she’s anti-woke but pro-social justice? What does that mean, exactly?
Feels like understanding what she really believes could be quite a challenge! There’s no obligation to fit into the standard spectrum of course, but if you don’t then you need to be super clear about why not and how words will translate into actions.
Not much hope for that government whatever they do. And the Germans have been so messed about there’s a way to go before there could be any other challenge than from the right. Look what was done to their Greens, turned inside out. From the outside..