Barbara Nowacka

Barbara Anna Nowacka (born 10 May 1975) is a Polish politician. A left activist in Labour United, and later in Your Movement, in October 2015 she became leader of the United Left coalition for the Polish parliamentary election, 2015, bringing together Labour United, Your Movement, the Democratic Left Alliance, the Greens, and the Polish Socialist Party.

Born in Warsaw, Nowacka was educated at the University of Warsaw, where she was active as a feminist in the Federation for Women and Family Planning. From 1997 to 2006, she was a member of the youth wing of Labour United and then of the party itself.

In 2014 she stood unsuccessfully in the European elections in Lublin for Europa Plus, supported by Aleksander Kwaśniewski. She went on from that defeat to join Janusz Palikot's Your Movement, becoming a joint leader, and helped to create the United Left, a broad coalition. On 4 October 2015 she was named as its candidate for prime minister if it won the election, and on 17 October she presented the coalition's programme at a conference in Katowice. However, in the elections on 25 October the United Left failed to reach the 8 per cent threshold for obtaining parliamentary representation under Poland's system of election, while Nowacka herself failed to be elected in the Warsaw I parliamentary constituency.

The Polish elections of 2015 were unusual in that most of the major parties contesting them were led by women. While Nowacka was the leader of the United Left, Ewa Kopacz of the governing Civic Platform party was the incumbent prime minister, and Beata Szydło of the opposition Law and Justice party was the main challenger. In the event, Szydło was elected with an overall majority.

In 2016, Foreign Policy magazine included Nowacka, together with Agnieszka Dziemianowicz-Bąk of Razem, on its annual list of the 100 most influential global thinkers for their role in organizing protests against a total ban on abortion in Poland.