Last year’s elections saw a resurgence for Germany’s socialist party Die Linke. In an interview, coleader Ines Schwerdtner explains how the party is seeking to expand beyond current left-wing voters to reach broader parts of the working class.
The night of last February’s German election, Christian Democratic Union leader Friedrich Merz said that Europe had to become more “independent” of the United States. The year since has shown that he meant this in rather narrow terms. His government has pledged massive military spending in order to boost Europeans’ role in NATO — even lifting Germany’s constitutional “debt brake” in order to allow this — while also kowtowing to Donald Trump’s leadership.
Yet Merz’s position is hardly strong. His grand coalition government — uniting his conservative party with the Social Democrats — is today rivaled by the nationalist Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), today in first place in many polls. It combines chameleonic economic positions with a strong anti-immigration line and may win power in some states for the first time in 2026. But there are also other sources of dissent in German society, not least popular skepticism toward rearmament and war.
For socialist party Die Linke, there’s an urgent fight to form an alternative, left-wing opposition. It made a good start in last February’s election, where — despite widespread precampaign expectations that it would fall out of the parliament (the Bundestag) — it nearly doubled its score. Not only did it increase its number of MPs, but in 2025 its membership soared from under 60,000 to over 120,000. It’s a step toward not just better election results but rebuilding its presence in working-class…
Auteur: Ines Schwerdtner
