In Germany, the parties of the political centre are losing their grip on power. They have been squeezed by the far-right for some years now. What is new is that they are being squeezed on the left as well.

Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht is named after one of Germany’s best-known politicians. An east German communist at the time of the reunification in 1990s, Wagenknecht was often compared to Rosa Luxembourg, the Communist resistance fighter murdered in 1919. She is married to Oskar Lafontaine, a former SPD leader and finance minister. She hails from the old Left Party but left last year in protest against its support for Ukraine. Early this year, she formed her own party and immediately went on to win seats in the European elections in June and in three state elections this month. In the Brandenburg elections on 22 September, she scored 13.5 percent, and ended up ahead of the CDU. But more importantly, she is now the powerbroker in two east German states, including in Brandenburg. There can be no coalitions without her. Her influence vastly exceeds the share of her vote.

Her opposition to military and financial support for Ukraine is the reason why her rise matters beyond German politics. Just as the anti-immigration rhetoric by the far-right Alternative for Germany infected political conservatives, Wagenknecht’s position on Ukraine rhetoric has infiltrated the discourse of the left, including within the SPD itself.

She caricatures pro-Ukrainian Greens as Metropolitan elites, a language borrowed from the right. She is also unique amongst politicians of the left in opposing immigration. I see her as a representative of a new hybrid class, a politician of the left with themes of the right.

For Olaf Scholz, she is a real problem. When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, he met with no effective opposition when he broke with Russia and firmly positioned Germany on Ukrainian  side. He also increased defence spending to comply with Nato targets.

Wagenknecht has become the most effective. She fills a niche in German politics. I know east Germans with moderate views on most issues, who would never dream of voting for the AfD, and yet who believe in the restoration of the German/Russian relationship. Many of them had direct dealings with Russia during the time of communism. For them Wagenknecht is a symbol of east German pride. Apart from her position on Ukraine and immigration, her other big theme is Germany’s de-industrialisation. The three issues are linked. Russia was the provider of cheap gas to German heavy industry. Immigration, she claims, depresses industrial wages. She is the ultimate rust-belt politician.

With her position on Ukraine, she also leads the resistance to the westernisation of Germany, to what Scholz famously declared as “an epochal change” after Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Russia. Scholz’ declaration reverberated through foreign policy salons in European capitals. It was what Germany’s allies always wanted to hear. But inside Germany, it is supported only by a relatively small majority.

The East Germans like it least of all. Its political leaders, many of them Social Democrats, used to be at the centre of the bilateral relationship with Russia. Many like Matthias Platzeck, a former SPD chairman, and Manuela Schwesig, state premier of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, and Rolf Mützenich, the current SPD leader in the Bundestag, invested their careers in this relationship. But it is only Wagenknecht who can express so openly what many Social Democrats also believe to be true – that Germany’s unconditional support for Ukraine has been a mistake. For as long as the war still rages in Ukraine, the spectre of Wagenknecht will haunt the left.

The SPD followed Scholz, reluctantly. The party almost baulked at his recent decision to station US medium-range missiles on German soil. Scholz’ new epoch is not one in which all SPD members want to live in.

He has since changed his tone. His support for a peace conference for Ukraine that includes Russia is part of a charm offensive. But Scholz has little direct control on the war itself, and therefore ultimately little control of his own political fortune. He desperately needs this war to end. Wagenknecht is already a problem for him, and this will get worse as we approach election day.

The biggest threat to Scholz would be early elections. After a string of disastrous losses, the FDP may pull the plug on the government early. A German comedian asked for an electron microscope so that he could analyse the party’s latest election results. If that were to happen, it would further play into the hands of Wagenknecht.

I see her appeal as a nostalgic throw-back to the supposed good old times of the Russian-German political axis. For me, Wagenknecht falls into the category of politically effective, but plainly wrong. De-industrialisation is proceeding for reasons that have nothing to do Russia, but with lack of investment, lack of strategic diversification, and lack of digitalisation. There is no way back to the bad old days when Gerhard Schröder and Putin spent time together in a sauna. Or the St Petersburg International Economic Forum, a Davos-style junket where Germans and Russians struck business deals. The destroyed Nord Stream Baltic Sea pipelines will never be rebuilt. When the war ends, the sanctions may be gradually lifted, but German-Russia relationship will not reset.

Until that reality sets in, Wagenknecht will continue to exert a strange appeal to Germans, many in the east, and many in the SPD. And unlike Scholz, she is a natural campaigner and a great orator.

In one specific way she is typical of the entire political class. Everybody represents some version of the past they want to hang on to.