Germany’s new anti-Ukraine party unnerving establishment

The UK-based The Spectator magazine has published an article about Sahra Wagenknecht and her eponymous party, the Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW) that emphasised firm opposition to Germany supporting Ukraine in its ongoing war with Russia. Caliber.Az reprints the article.

Her party may be less than two months old, but already Sahra Wagenknecht has put a cat amongst the pigeons in Germany. She launched her eponymous party, the Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW) on 8 January this year, a few months after sensationally quitting the left-wing Die Linke party in October over disagreements on the party’s Ukraine and refugee policies, among others. Now, nearly a quarter of Germans now say they could imagine voting for her party at the next general election.

According to a survey conducted by the pollsters Allensbach, 24 per cent of Germans say they could vote for the BSW next year. In the former East Germany, Wagenknecht’s popularity is even higher, with a staggering 40 per cent apparently considering backing the party. While Germany’s federal elections won’t be held until 2024, 7 per cent of Germans would pick Wagenknecht and her party were a vote to be held tomorrow.

At first glance, polling at 7 per cent may not seem like much. This would place the BSW fifth behind the far more established CDU/CSU, AfD, SPD and Green parties. But the fact that a quarter of the German population say they could vote for Wagenknecht at the next election is beginning to make the political establishment sweat.

They are worried because the BSW’s support base is unusually wide. Men and women are getting behind the party in equal proportions, and it is supported by a mix of ages and levels of education. The BSW seems to be pulling in voters from across the political spectrum. Of those who said they’d back Wagenknecht next year, and who voted in the last federal election, 15 per cent had previously backed the right-wing AfD while 14 per cent had voted for Wagenknecht’s old party Die Linke. A quarter of the BSW’s voter base previously supported the CDU/CSU (Angela Merkel’s party) while 19 per cent backed Olaf Scholz’s SPD. 

What explains the breadth of the BSW’s popularity? When asked why they would be supporting the party, 69 per cent listed ‘dissatisfaction with current politics’ while 59 per cent said they found Sahra Wagenknecht herself ‘convincing’. Over half of the respondents also said they ‘had a feeling that the country is going south under the leadership of other parties’.

In other words, Wagenknecht appears to be benefiting from the widespread dissatisfaction with Olaf Scholf’s chaotic leadership. His traffic light coalition is constantly infighting and as a result, has struggled to pass legislation in the two years the Chancellor has been in power.

Interestingly, 49 per cent of Wagenknecht’s supporters also said they had chosen to support her because they are ‘unhappy with the Russia policies of the other parties’. Wagenknecht has emphasised her firm opposition to Germany supporting Ukraine in its ongoing war with Russia. She says that she wants to end the provision of military aid and blames NATO for escalating the conflict. She has also demanded that Germany support the negotiation of a peace settlement between the two countries.

Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht has unnerved Germany’s other parties partly because it has proven particularly difficult to shoehorn it into a particular political mould. As well as its opposition to giving aid to Ukraine, the BSW opposes the green policies pushed by the current government. While it aligns with left-leaning economic positions such as financing a larger welfare state by taxing the rich, on socio-economic issues such as immigration and gender diversity it skews heavily to the right. 

Depending on who you ask, the BSW has variously been dubbed ‘left-conservative’, ‘populist’ and ‘socialist’. Wagenknecht herself has said the party is ‘obviously not right-wing’ but said she had refused to include the word ‘left’ in the name of her new party because she wanted to appeal to a broad range of voters.

The BSW views Die Linke and the Green party as its main adversaries. Some pollsters have even suggested that, come 2025, Wagenknecht has the potential to grab enough of the vote share from Die Linke to prevent the left-wing party meeting the 5 per cent threshold necessary to enter the Bundestag. But it seems that the party also poses a credible threat to the AfD: after Wagenknecht launched her party last month, the regional AfD branch in Brandenburg admitted they were concerned the BSW could steal votes from them when the state heads to the polls for local elections this autumn.

Germany is currently undergoing a substantial political realignment. Thanks to political chaos in Berlin, a worsening economy and rising levels of migration, the AfD has seen a significant boost in support over the past year. It remains to be seen whether Sahra Wagenknecht can convert the BSW’s growing popularity into hard numbers at the polls. Even so, there are few signs that the party’s momentum will slow any time soon. There is every chance it could become the newest threat to the German political establishment.