A charismatic leader of Germany’s populist left wing on Monday laid the foundation for a new party, expected to poach support from the resurgent far right and further splinter the political landscape.
Sahra Wagenknecht, a firebrand MP from far-left Die Linke party and a stalwart of opposition politics since the fall of the Berlin Wall, said she was starting a new political association named after herself.
The Alliance Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW), which includes nine other deputies, would be leaving the Linke to focus on forming its own party by early next year, she told reporters.
“The way things are going can’t continue,” Wagenknecht, 54, told a packed news conference.
“Otherwise we probably wouldn’t recognize our country in 10 years,” she said, denouncing “unchecked migration” which she blamed for exacerbating “the problems in our schools, above all in poor neighborhoods.”
Wagenknecht said her new political outfit would also mark a sharp departure “from the blind, haphazard eco-activism that makes people’s lives even more expensive without doing anything to help the climate.”
The Linke, which has its roots in both East German communism and the West German labor movement, has long been riven by strife and the defection of Wagenknecht’s team could eventually sound its death knell.
But political analysts focused primarily on BSW’s potential threat to the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), which has surged in strength on migration fears and is polling at around 22 percent, ahead of all three parties in Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s ruling coalition.
A survey by the independent INSA opinion research institute published on Sunday by daily newspaper Bild showed that 27 percent of German voters said they could back the new far-left party.
“The name Wagenknecht is attractive. Polls show it,” Der Spiegel journalist Mathieu von Rohr said on Monday.
“There could be a gap in the market for her mix of anti-Americanism, Putin apologism, socialism, migration scepticism as well as openness to conspiracy theories.”
Wagenknecht as a fixture on political chat shows has frequently blamed the West and NATO for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine while stirring doubts about government measures to control the spread of the coronavirus during the pandemic.
With two east German states going to the polls next year, where the AfD is expected to perform well, analysts said Wagenknecht’s new party could fracture the vote, making it more difficult for mainstream democratic parties to form a government.
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