Left before split?

Wagenknecht denies only half-heartedly - SPD is already campaigning for party remnants

Created: 09/17/2022, 06:04

By: Florian Naumann

Germany is starting an economic war against Putin's Russia - Sahra Wagenknecht's speech is plaguing the left.

The competition already seems to be rubbing their hands.

Cologne/Munich – The left is in trouble: the party would have fallen out of the Bundestag by a hair's breadth in the federal elections.

Now the former figurehead Sahra Wagenknecht is getting her comrades into trouble.

A widely criticized Bundestag speech against the Russia sanctions threatens to split the left.

On Friday (September 16) Wagenknecht continued to fuel concerns.

In view of this, the SPD is already preparing to take over the remnants of the divided competition in the left camp.

Sahra Wagenknecht: Left-wing celebrities throw in the towel after the Russia speech – they have no “understanding”

look to the right?

Sahra Wagenknecht polarized in her own party.

© IMAGO/Emmanuele Contini

Wagenknecht had snubbed the traffic light coalition in the Bundestag plenum as "the stupidest government in Europe".

That in itself would probably not have been a problem for the left.

However, the specific allegations also repelled many party members.

Germany is launching "an unprecedented economic war against our most important energy supplier," Wagenknecht called out in her speech.

She called for an end to the sanctions against the Russian state - and received applause not least from the AfD.

The result: an outcry in his own party.

And resignations of at least two political celebrities.

Left finance expert Fabio de Masi and social lobbyist Ulrich Schneider threw in the towel.

Wagenknecht was now demonstratively surprised in an interview.

And denied its own spin-off ambitions half-heartedly at best.

Will Wagenknecht split the left?

"I am currently a member"

Applause from the leaders of the left: Sahra Wagenknecht after her controversial speech in the Bundestag.

© IMAGO/Jean MW

"I have no understanding for that," said Wagenknecht in a podcast of the

with a view to Schneider's departure.

In no way does she have anything in common with the right-wing spectrum: "What's right-wing populist about it when you say we shouldn't throw millions of people into poverty?" asked the former Left Party leader rhetorically.

That's exactly what her comrades accused in an open letter entitled "Enough!".

The group called for Wagenknecht to be excluded from the parliamentary group.

The party and faction leaders have not yet followed the request.

Instead, they appealed to the unity of the left.

Probably also, as many commentators suspect, in order not to give Wagenknecht any reasons for an exit - the politician had already aroused corresponding concerns a few years ago with the founding of the "Get Up" alliance.

A split could be the deathblow for the left, which is already teetering in the polls.

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In the interview, however, Wagenknecht hardly countered long-simmering speculation about a departure.

"I'm currently a member of the left," she explained.

Left in turbulence: SPD is now even courting members of the Bundestag

Meanwhile, the SPD is demonstratively opening its arms to the dissatisfied.

"I'm happy about everyone who stands up for social justice and sees their future in the SPD," said Jessica Rosenthal, member of the Bundestag and Juso

.

"We can use every clever head." She is happy "about everyone who reports".

The Munich member of the Bundestag Sebastian Roloff even went a step further and indirectly campaigned for elected representatives of the left.

There are a number of colleagues on the left "with whom I work well and who would certainly fit well into the SPD parliamentary group," Roloff told the news magazine.

"I would therefore also welcome the sensible ones who fight for social and progressive politics." Should MPs actually defect, it would be a small historical joke - after all, the left was also launched by former SPD politicians.

For the time being, the left can probably not hope for Wagenknecht's de-escalation course.

The wife of Oskar Lafontaine, who has since left the Linke, underscored her course in Russia in an interview with the

.

"The fact that we are bankrupting our bakers and artisans is not helping Ukraine," she stressed.

“What we destroy now will not come back.

So far, nobody has been able to explain to me plausibly why we are helping Ukraine in this way.”

The prominent leftist Klaus Ernst had recently defended Wagenknecht in the talk "Sandra Maischberger", as in an interim question in the Bundestag immediately after Wagenknecht's speech - the inner-party opponent attested a "perpetrator-victim reversal" and "party-damaging effect".

So Wagenknecht is not alone in the field either.

There seems to be a deep rift running through the party.

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