Left Party after the Berlin election: The Left has to change if it wants to govern

The Left Party in Berlin currently has the same problem as Friedrich Merz. He was once elected as chancellor for the CDU-pure by party plebiscite and has not been able to deliver since then. In the 2025 federal election, the CDU and the CSU achieved 28.6 percent, and the Union became the strongest parliamentary group in the Bundestag. But that was it.

Very similar to the Left in Berlin, which undoubtedly won the elections to the House of Representatives, opened up new groups of voters and, through its top candidate Elif Eralp, offered identity political representation like no other party in Berlin.

In this respect, the Left's victory is similar to that of Manuela Schwesig (SPD) in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, with the crucial difference that Schwesig has broken away from her anti-Ukrainian stance and, according to her own - of course calculated - statement, has renounced votes from the so-called peace camp. The election result of 35 percent and a concrete, silent government option are a success that the left in Berlin can currently only dream of.

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Because Schwesig's cleverness, which she showed on the evening of the election, is missing from the Left and its top candidate. Politicians are not elected so that they can implement exactly what they and their party have said over the years. Rather, they are elected so that they can govern - and then see what happens. The fact that they often sound like speaking puppets, be it Hanseatic like Scholz once did or populist Swabian like Özdemir, is much more easily forgiven than Merz's whining.

What makes the Left in Berlin worse is that it is a trendy party. What still shines in the scene in terms of personnel and discourse suddenly casts very dark shadows when the question of power is raised, meaning that previously all-powerful and wealthy people have to fear for their sinecures.

A scene party must have a plan for this and take the painful step of throwing out those who believed most in success and possibly also worked most for it if they harm it. These people were good in the pub or at some voting booths, but they can't stand the spotlight.

It is unfortunate that the left did not learn this lesson from the Andrej Holm case ten years ago or simply forgot it. With the technically capable Holm as Secretary of State for Construction, the Berlin rental housing market might not look quite as broken as it is today. But the man with a SED and Stasi past was unsustainable as a person in this position.

Whatever comes out of the ongoing talks between the Left, the Greens and the SPD: Over the course of a legislative period, the Left will not be able to avoid betraying part of its base anyway. If it doesn't want to or can't do that, it wouldn't be the first party to achieve more in opposition than in government.