Left wants to rule in Berlin: Young Left Party grows up surprisingly quickly

There comes a moment when Kerstin Wolter has to intervene. The state chairwoman of the Berlin Left Party goes to the microphone and makes it clear to the delegates that acceptance of the motion up for vote would mean the end of coalition negotiations with the Greens and the SPD in Berlin.

“The Left Berlin criticizes the agreement reached on October 8, 2026 between the SPD, the Greens and our party to start the explorations,” says the motion submitted by the Steglitz-Zehlendorf district association.

The party leadership wants the laboriously negotiated paper to become part of the coalition agreement for a Berlin left-wing alliance. This is also what it says in the exploratory paper that the Left, the Greens and the SPD had agreed on. An acceptance would have been the bang many were waiting for.

The application is clearly defeated. And with it the issue of anti-Semitism, which has accompanied the Berlin Left since the beginning of the preliminary talks with the Greens and the SPD. At least on this party conference Saturday in the Don Xuan House in Lichtenberg. Two thirds of the delegates support the “Berlin Agreement,” which is intended to protect Jewish life and uphold Israel’s right to exist.

In the end, only ten of the more than 150 delegates present voted against starting coalition negotiations. This clears the way for it to begin on Monday. The Left, of which it is often said that many in the party do not want to govern, surprisingly clearly passed its test this Saturday.

This also has to do with the view of the Red Town Hall. No sentence can be heard more often this Saturday than that Berlin can make history with Elif Eralp at the head of a left-wing alliance.

The vast majority of delegates also know that making Berlin affordable is more likely to be achieved in a coalition led by the Left than in the opposition. This realpolitik molting is remarkable in that the Left – Berlin's largest party with 19,000 members – has recently grown rapidly and rejuvenated itself. At the end of 2024 there were only around 8,000.

Now the young wild ones on the left have grown up in fast motion with the Red City Hall in their sights. It took the Greens much longer to shed their skin on the issue of militancy in the 1980s.

How mature the party actually is in the end will become clear when a member survey decides on a coalition agreement. Another decision could have already been made on Saturday. By demonstrating against her own party in front of the hall, the controversial MP Vanessa Emde demonstratively placed herself on the sidelines.

Those of the 44 Left MPs, including 35 new ones, who have previously hesitated about being kicked out of the parliamentary group should now have clarity. Emde doesn't have the Red Town Hall in mind, but rather its own ego.