2024-07-05 23:00:14
The defeat in the European elections is still having an impact on the Left Party. Federal chairman Martin Schirdewan says: “It went badly” and “it can’t go on like this.”
After the crushing defeat in the European elections, Left Party leader Martin Schirdewan is apparently considering stepping down from the party leadership. “I will let you know in good time whether I will run again,” Schirdewan told the “Tagesspiegel”. When asked by the newspaper, he said he still had plans. “I will throw myself with all my strength into the tasks that lie ahead of us until the party conference.”
At the party conference in October, the federal executive board of the Left Party will be re-elected. Schirdewan has led the party together with Janine Wissler for two years. In the European elections, the Left Party received only 2.7 percent of the vote, about half as much as five years ago. Schirdewan was himself the top candidate.
Now he told the newspaper: “No question: It went badly. There’s no getting around it.”
A few days ago, long-standing MP Gesine Lötzsch announced her resignation after the next federal election and sharply criticized the party leadership. This also came from social medicine expert Gerhard Trabert, who wanted to enter the European Parliament for the Left Party. Due to the party’s small share of the vote, he was not given a mandate.
Schirdewan said that the Left Party first wanted to carry out an internal evaluation of the election campaign. “But it is clear that consequences must be drawn. Things cannot continue as they are.” The party leader had already said on election night on June 9 that the party would carry out structural and programmatic work before the 2025 federal election and “also prepare itself for the future in terms of personnel.”
When asked recently, his co-chairwoman Wissler also left it open whether she would draw personal conclusions from the election defeat and refrain from running again. “Of course we hear the criticism,” said Wissler at the beginning of the week. “And of course we take it seriously.”
When you have such an election result, you have to ask yourself critically what went wrong in the election campaign. “We need such a debate in the party. But I also say that we need it within the party.” Before then, she does not want to comment on the “content, strategy and personnel structure”. The party executive committee will meet on the weekend of July 6 and 7.
Some comrades express the clear expectation that the party leadership will step down – but not in public. There are no prominent successors in sight. Names from the second row are mentioned who are hardly known nationwide.
In October, the Left Party lost one of its best-known politicians, Sahra Wagenknecht. She founded the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance and achieved 6.2 percent in the European elections.
The polls look even more positive for the BSW ahead of the state elections in Thuringia, Saxony and Brandenburg in September. As things stand, Wagenknecht’s party can hope for double-digit results and possible participation in government.
The Left, on the other hand, must fear further setbacks. In Thuringia, it still achieved 31 percent in 2019 and has Prime Minister Bodo Ramelow. There, its ratings have more than halved in surveys. In Saxony, the Left ranks just below the five percent hurdle in surveys, and just above it in Brandenburg. In 2025, the Left wants to return to the Bundestag as a parliamentary group, but it is also below five percent nationwide.