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One of Germany’s most prominent leftwing politicians said she is setting up a new party with an anti-immigration message that will compete with — and potentially peel away support from — the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD).
Sahra Wagenknecht announced the movement at a packed press conference in Berlin on Monday, saying her aim was to offer a voice to people frustrated with the traditional parties and put off by the AfD’s strident nationalism.
Her new Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance — for Reason and Justice (BSW) launched on Monday and will be the basis of a party to be formed in January, which will take part in the European parliament elections next June.
It would, she said, be a “serious address” for people thinking of voting AfD “out of fury and desperation, but not because they’re rightwing”.
A fixture of TV talk-shows, a talented orator and best-selling author, Wagenknecht is one of Germany’s best-known personalities, with a huge following among voters disillusioned with mainstream politics. A poll by Insa on Sunday said 27 per cent of Germans could imagine voting for a party led by her.
Like Wagenknecht herself, who is half-Iranian, BSW will be difficult to pigeonhole, a movement combining traditional leftwing ideas such as a tax on wealth, massive public investments in education and opposition to Nato with a rightwing rejection of irregular immigration — an issue that has risen to the top of the German political agenda as refugee numbers rise.
“Our country is completely overburdened,” she said, adding that Germany lacked 700,000 flats, and tens of thousands of teachers and day care centre places. “To allow massive immigration in such a situation is just irresponsible,” she said.
Her negative views on immigration first came to the fore in 2015 during a refugee crisis that saw tens of thousands of people fleeing war-torn Syria for a haven in Germany.
In recent months she has emerged as a vocal opponent of western support for Ukraine and economic sanctions against Russia, calling for more efforts to find a diplomatic solution to the conflict while defending herself against accusations she is pro-Russian.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, she also took an oppositional stance, backing anti-vaxxers and rejecting mask mandates.
Wagenknecht’s launch comes at a time of growing discontent with the government of Olaf Scholz, a fractious coalition between Social Democrats, Greens and liberals. The three parties performed disastrously in two recent regional elections, in the states of Bavaria and Hesse, which saw a huge rise in support for the AfD.
Germany was being ruled by the “worst government in its postwar history”, Wagenknecht said, accusing the Scholz coalition of being “disorganised, short-sighted and, in part, incompetent”.
“We have decided to form a new party because we are convinced we can’t go on like this,” she said. “Otherwise we probably won’t recognise our country in 10 years.”
Wagenknecht’s decision to quit Die Linke, a hard-left outfit that emerged from the former East German Communist SED, and form her own party comes after years of tension between and her and party leaders who bristled at her often unorthodox political positions.
Her move is a disaster for Die Linke, whose parliamentary group she used to lead. Several of its 38 MPs said they were defecting to the BSW, meaning the party will lose its status as a parliamentary caucus and be reclassified as a simple “group”, with fewer rights.
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