|
|
In recent years, the Polish left has enjoyed considerable influence on public debate. Many of its policy stances on both socio-economic and moral-cultural issues now enjoy widespread support and have been adopted by more liberal and centrist political groupings. However, this has not been matched by electoral success.
For much of the post-1989 period, the most powerful political force on the left was the communist successor Democratic Left Alliance (SLD), which governed Poland from 1993-97 and 2001-5. However, the Alliance’s support collapsed at the 2005 parliamentary election following a series of spectacular high level corruption scandals.
It contested the 2015 election as part of the United Left (ZL) coalition but narrowly failed to cross the 8% parliamentary representation threshold for electoral alliances (5% for individual parties). As a result, left-wing parties did not secure parliamentary representation for the first time since 1989.
The Alliance faced a challenge on its radical left flank from the Together (Razem) party, which gained kudos among many younger, left-leaning Poles for its dynamism and programmatic clarity. It accused the Alliance of betraying left-wing ideas by pursuing orthodox liberal economic policies when in office.
In the event, Together won 3.6% of the vote in 2015, which was not enough to obtain parliamentary representation but meant that it peeled away sufficient left-wing votes to prevent the United Left from crossing the 8% threshold. However, Together failed to capitalise on its early promise and attract a broader range of support beyond the well-educated urban “hipsters” that formed its core electorate.
In 2019, another left-wing challenger party emerged in the form of the social liberal Spring (Wiosna) grouping formed by veteran sexual minorities campaigner Robert Biedroń, at the time the Polish left’s most popular and charismatic politician. However, after a promising start, Spring struggled to carve out a niche for itself and only just crossed the 5% threshold in that year’s European Parliament election, well below expectations.
Consequently, these three parties contested the 2019 legislative election as a united Left (Lewica) slate and finished third with 12.6% of the vote, regaining parliamentary representation for the left after a four-year hiatus. Many left-wing activists and commentators hoped that the new Left parliamentary caucus would use this platform to shift the terms of the debate decisively to the left and challenge the right-wing and liberal-centrist duopoly that has dominated Polish politics since 2005. The Democratic Left Alliance changed its name to the New Left (Nowa Lewica) and merged with Spring, although Together chose to maintain its organisational independence and distinctive ideological identity.
In fact, last month’s parliamentary election results were bittersweet for the Left. On the one hand, opposition parties won enough seats to secure a parliamentary majority and it looks set to become the first left-wing grouping to join a Polish government for 18 years. On the other hand, the Left lost half-a-million voters as its vote share fell to 8.6%, which translated into only 26 seats in the 460-member Sejm, Poland’s more powerful lower parliamentary chamber. This was 23 fewer than in 2019, making it only the fourth largest parliamentary grouping. This means the Left will return to office as the smallest member of a governing coalition dominated by liberal- and agrarian-centrist parties....
more at LSE