Germany’s new far-left party calls for an end to the Ukraine war

The leader of Germany’s new left-wing populist party the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) criticised Olaf Scholz’s increasingly unpopular government and called for an immediate end to the Ukraine war at its founding congress in Berlin on Saturday.

Sahra Wagenknecht, the party’s leader, told delegates that society was at a tipping point, with voters overcome with “insecurity, outrage and fury”.

“We are setting out to change politics in Germany,” she said.

The new party’s programme combines traditional left-wing policies, such as higher taxes on the rich, with a markedly anti-immigration message — a strategy it hopes will allow it to compete with and potentially peel support away from the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD).

In a 30-minute speech that was frequently interrupted by rapturous applause, Wagenknecht said the new party stood for economic common sense, social justice, and “peace and detente, instead of arms races and ever more war”.

She said it advocated “freedom of opinion and respect for dissenters, instead of cancel culture and a fast-encroaching political authoritarianism, which we experienced in its crassest form during the pandemic”.

Wagenknecht said the party’s supporters included “trades unionists, businessmen, careworkers, policemen, theologians, city dwellers and villagers”.

But it clearly bears Wagenknecht’s unmistakable imprimatur. A fixture of TV talk shows, a firebrand orator and best-selling author, she is one of Germany’s best-known personalities, with a huge following among voters disillusioned with mainstream politics, and she dominates the new party.

She was long a senior figure in Die Linke, a hard-left party that has its roots in the East German Communist party. But her views — especially her opposition to irregular immigration, and her frequent broadsides against “woke” political culture — eventually diverged sharply with others in Die Linke, and last year she announced she was breaking away…