DIE LINKE’s co-leaders Janine Wissler and Martin Schirdewan will step down at October’s party conference, they have announced.

Germany’s Left party executive met at the weekend, agreeing to a main resolution to conference that acknowledges it is in a “dangerous, existentially threatening situation.”

It polled just 2.7 per cent in June’s European elections, barely half what it needs to ensure re-election to the Bundestag and less than half the vote of the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance, whose eponymous leader led a breakaway from Die Linke last year, primarily because of the latter’s failure to oppose militarism and back peace demonstrations.

A report in the Morning Star’s sister paper Junge Welt said Die Linke barely touched on the issue of peace in its resolution, failing to recognise a key cause of its decline in support.

Ms Wissler argued in a recent online piece for Die Linke’s in-house magazine that the party should have forced a split with Ms Wagenknecht earlier, though it is unclear how this would have helped its polling.