If you mean well with the left, you could say: The party is in the identification phase. Except that this phase has lasted for several years. On central questions of content, the comrades can not agree on a common position. It is not even clear who the Left wants to do for politics.
Instead, disputes and friction repeatedly overlap the necessary issues. In the latest parliamentary elections, the party-minded Amira Mohamed Ali was only just able to prevail in a fight candidate.
The left could quickly come into a situation in which it must be clear who they are and what they stand for. The grand coalition is shaking, new elections in 2020 are quite conceivable. If the SPD, the Greens and the Left together win a majority, the three parties would be under enormous pressure to implement such a tri-party alliance.
Joint meeting with Group leaders
If it goes to left-wing boss Katja Kipping, the comrades should prepare for it exactly. In a joint session of the party executive with the newly elected faction headed by Mohamed Ali and Dietmar Bartsch, Kipping urged the comrades to base their strategy entirely on a center-left alliance.
It is no longer enough "to say only what goes wrong," said Kipping according to the manuscript of her speech, which is available to SPIEGEL. The left must "dare government". In the elections in Brandenburg, Saxony and the European Parliament, the party had to suffer "painful clapping", because "for the electors our function was unclear." In Bremen or Thuringia, on the other hand, the leftists had the prospect of "actual power of organization" - and thus performed better.
"For us as a left-wing, that means that we now have to position ourselves in such a way that we actually want to implement an alternative," said Kipping. That means, "that we also want a left-wing government".
Kipping defends the Greens
In the party, the rejection of government alliances is not so great as it was in earlier times. However, the question of whether the Left defines itself as a potential governmental force with the willingness to compromise or as a protest party and parliamentary arm of movements is by no means clear.
Ex-faction leader Sahra Wagenknecht, for example, had repeatedly attacked the SPD and the Greens in particular. Her successor Mohamed Ali said in an interview in March for the Youtube channel "Jung & Naiv," she currently thinks "thoughts like R2G" - the abbreviation for red-red-green - for "problematic, as long as the SPD is not appropriate times again social-democratized ". She would not like to go into such a coalition as the smallest partner and then run the risk of "giving herself up". Especially the Greens attacked Mohamed Ali sharply. These are "arbitrary" and "not a social party," she said. "This is a neo-liberal party".
From such criticism of the potential coalition partner Kipping distanced himself in the board meeting. Whether greens are "leftist" or "bourgeois" they consider it a "meaningless confrontation," Kipping said. "A green party must defend its green goals just as a leftist party represents its leftist goals." Explicitly praised Kipping the recent decisions of the Greens on minimum wage, rent policy and debt brake.
Chairwoman under pressure
With her speech, Kipping goes on the offensive with a view to the upcoming strategy debate. In the spring, the comrades want to find a way out of their identity crisis at a conference.
Kipping is also heavily under pressure internally. The parliamentary elections have confirmed the previous power alliance from Bartsch reformers and Wagenknecht left rather. The third camp among the comrades, to which also Kipping belongs, defeated - albeit within this group the support for the party leader is crumbling.
Kipping had pointedly avoided the power struggle for the top of the faction. Later, she sought contact with Mohamed Ali, whose predecessor she had barely exchanged a word with. Kipping and Mohamed Ali have already met for a "get-together", as it is called from left circles. The atmosphere was friendly.
The decisive factor will be how the relationship develops in all substantive differences. For Kipping personally, a lot is at stake in the coming months. She was repeatedly said to have ambitions for the group presidency. This was now known nothing. Kipping again in the summer as party leader, there should also be strong resistance. A non-binding rule on the left says that the chairpersons should only remain in office for eight years. For Kipping, 2020 would be over.
In contrast, many of their opponents even envision Kipping in another office: as a minister in a red-red-green coalition.
