Arguably, the splintering of the German left began with the rise of the Green party in the early 1980s, but it became undeniable with the establishment of the Left Party in the mid-00s. The crux came in 2005 when Chancellor Gerhard Schröder engineered an early national election as a referendum on his Agenda 2010 reforms, which significantly cut Germany's social welfare system in the interest of growth and economic competitiveness. [...]
The weakening of the left in the Merkel era hasn't brought with it lasting gains on the political right. On the contrary, that era began in 2005 with more than 50 percent of voters casting ballots for one of the left- wing parties – SPD, PDS or Greens. The conservatives' success has been built on their relative cohesion. By contrast, because of the connection with communist East Germany, no SPD leader since 2005 has dared risk cooperating with the PDS/Left Party. [...]
Long gone are the days when the left was neatly aligned with the industrial working classes. The big-tent leftist movement so vaguely formulated by Lafontaine and Wagenknecht would have to bring together the interests of, for instance, blue-collar workers, the long-term unemployed, affluent environmentalists, human- and civil-rights activists, single parents and Germans from vastly different cultural backgrounds in the east and west.
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