GERMANY: "Lafontaine is coming." The posters hanging around the Ruhr city of Essen sound like a threat and a promise at once. By late afternoon more than 1,000 people have gathered on Willy-Brandt-Platz.
Brandt, the former Social Democrats (SPD) leader and chancellor, was an idol for generations of young SPD politicians, including Oskar Lafontaine. Now the prodigal son of German politics is campaigning with the reformed communists against his former party.
Mr Lafontaine (62) , with a red face and short-sleeved shirt, shouts for 40 minutes, attacking the government of Gerhard Schröder and reforms he says unfairly hit the less well off. The Left Party wants a minimum wage and increased pension, dole and child allowances; Mr Lafontaine is fashioning himself as a modern-day Robin Hood.
"Long story short, we want to go after the rich people's money. None of the rest dare any more," he bellows.
The plain-taking goes down well with the crowd of mostly older faces and white heads who suck free sweets as cheers of "Os-kar! Os-kar!" fill Willy-Brandt-Platz.
It's only a decade since Lafontaine became SPD chairman and seven years since he engineered Schröder's general election victory. Six months after becoming finance minister, however, he left his Bonn office and never returned. After six years in the political wilderness, Lafontaine founded the Left Party after Schröder called a snap election for September 18th.
By last month, the shotgun political union between the reformed eastern communists and disaffected western German SPD members was riding high in polls, with 12 per cent support.
Now the party is down to 8 per cent and falling, largely thanks to Bild newspaper's campaign against "Lafontaine the Luxury Leftwinger".
The paper published holiday pictures of him in a €3,000-a-week villa in Spain under the headline "Here's Oskar recovering from the fight for the small man."
"After the initial novelty, people are starting to ask themselves: 'What can they actually do?' " said Mr Manfred Güller of the Forsa polling agency.
Left Party insiders reject any suggestion of propping up the SPD-Green government in a new coalition. Insteady they favour building alliances with a Schröder-free SPD on the opposition benches. But in their dream scenario, the Left Party would attract enough votes to prevent a CDU-FDP majority, forcing a grand coalition with the SPD. As one party insider puts it: "Oskar would have great fun then."