Party resignations: Left Party dreads breaking with Wagenknecht

Ulrich Schneider, the chief executive of the Paritätischer Wohlfahrtsverband, resigned from the Left Party on Monday.

Many in the party are shocked that Germany's best-known social lobbyist has taken this step.

It means that the decidedly left-social establishment is breaking with the party and no longer seeing it as an ally.

Markus Wehner

Political correspondent in Berlin.

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Schneider made it clear why he left.

The fact that the left-wing parliamentary group in the Bundestag let their MP Sahra Wagenknecht to the lectern last week, knowing full well what they would “launch”, that was “too much”, he wrote on Twitter.

Schneider even drove to Rathenow in Brandenburg on Sunday as a guest for the party executive’s closed meeting – but apparently the consequences that could have prevented his step were not drawn there.

On Monday, the well-known former member of the Bundestag Fabio De Masi left the party.

Wagenknecht's speech in the Bundestag

In her speech, Wagenknecht painted the picture of an impending major catastrophe in Germany, as did the AfD speakers.

Then she threw herself into the breach for the aggressor Russia, who appeared in her diction as the attacked.

"The biggest problem is your grandiose idea of ​​starting an unprecedented economic war against our most important energy supplier," she fumed in the direction of the chancellor and minister, who berated her as the "stupidest government in Europe".

She demanded "End the fatal economic sanctions!" and "Let us in Russia negotiate with Russia about the resumption of gas supplies!".

The best-known left-wing politician received a lot of applause from the AfD.

There was also applause from her own group.

However, only half of the MPs, such as the chairman of the Energy Committee, Klaus Ernst, who advocates deals with Putin, or the fanatical NATO opponent Sevim Dagdelen.

The other half of the left-wing parliamentarians stayed away from the performance in protest against the decision of the parliamentary group leadership to let Wagenknecht speak.

The parliamentary group leaders Dietmar Bartsch and Amira Mohamed Ali had insisted on Wagenknecht despite objections - they had only wrested the promise not to demand the opening of the Nord Stream 2 Baltic Sea pipeline from her.

Violent opposition from his own party

Many left-wing politicians distanced themselves after Wagenknecht's speech.

With their demands, they contradict the decisions of the Federal Party Congress of the Left, which had condemned Russia's war and advocated sanctions.

The party deputy Lorenz Gösta Beutin accused Wagenknecht of operating a "perpetrator-victim reversal".

Former Federal Secretary Jörg Schindler wrote on Twitter that the left-wing faction did not represent the will of its members in the Bundestag, but "behaved like an arrogant feudal court bastard state".

Three East German state politicians - Jule Nagel, Katharina König-Preuss and Henriette Quade - called in an open letter to the party executive and parliamentary group to exclude Wagenknecht from the group.

She had "played off the injustice of distribution in Germany against the attacked population in Ukraine, playing into Putin's hands and wasting speaking time on right-wing populist platitudes".

In addition, Bartsch and Mohamed Ali should resign as group leaders.

The authors recalled earlier statements by Wagenknecht on the admission of refugees, on European integration or on corona protection measures, with which they opposed the majority of the party and came close to the right-wing populists.

In view of Wagenknecht's behavior, the "limit of tolerability" has long been exceeded, according to the appeal.

Warning of a split in the party

The left chairmen Janine Wissler and Martin Schirdewan probably see it similarly.

You would have considered the "speech allocation to be wrong" and made that clear to the leadership of the parliamentary group.

“We believe that MEPs who speak for the group should represent the positions decided by the left.

If you can't do that, then someone else should talk," they told the "Frankfurter Rundschau".

But they didn't demand consequences at the weekend, instead they only warned that the party could split.

However, the split has long since taken place, even if it has not officially taken place.

Apparently, the party leadership fears that Wagenknecht could present himself as a victim and that the left, which only sits in the Bundestag thanks to three direct mandates, will continue to lose ground.

Like the AfD, the left is counting on a “hot autumn”

But allowing the Wagenknecht camp to do its thing accelerates the decline of the party.

Because Wagenknecht has made it clear that she will not shy away from following the same path as the right-wing populists.

She praises the large demonstration with 70,000 participants in Prague as a model, at which extreme right and left protested together against rising prices, the EU and NATO.

In their distress, the left has conjured up a “hot autumn” in Germany, which the AfD and right-wing extremist enemies of the constitution are also counting on.

The fact that the Left Party, as recently in Leipzig, is calling for Monday demonstrations abused by right-wing populists, which once shaped the GDR opposition in the peaceful revolution, fits in perfectly.