Holding the line
The AfD’s shock breakthrough in eastern Germany shows that Europe’s centre-left needs a new strategy, argues Phil Brickell
Last Sunday’s win in the Saxony-Anhalt state elections for the far-right Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD) was profound. Not only is it the first time any far-right party has won control of one of Germany’s 16 states since 1945, but the 44 per cent share of the vote garnered by the AfD showed the depth of support for a party which is openly xenophobic, close to Putin’s Russia, and designated by German domestic intelligence as “confirmed far-right extremist”.
Gaining 39 of the 83 seats in the state parliament, the results saw the AfD secure a 23-percentage point swing in their favour, hoovering up votes from chancellor Friedrich Merz’s centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) which has been in power with the Social Democratic Party (SPD) in Berlin since last year. By contrast, the SPD trod water in third place, with eight seats. In the 30 years since German re-unification, Saxony-Anhalt has rarely been a bastion for the centre-left.
Yet there is more to the result than a yearning for the past amongst communities that have felt left behind for the past three decades. Yes, the AfD’s ascendancy in Saxony-Anhalt was driven by concerns over immigration and a Cold War-era nostalgia towards Russia, but also by fears over industrial decline, young people moving away, and a sense that the federal government remains out-of-touch.
At the time of writing, the Saxony-Anhalt minister president is yet to formally be confirmed, but it now seems only a matter of time before we see the far-right running policing, the school system, cultural institutions, and local government for the two million people across the state.
Against this backdrop, further pressure is piling on Merz’s CDU-led government in Berlin, with his party already plummeting in the polls. It also comes ahead of crucial state elections in the capital as well as in Mecklenburg-Pomerania later this month – states where the AfD has historically not performed as well, but will act as a wider litmus test of the far-right’s trajectory. Should the CDU lose badly in Berlin – where it is currently in charge – Merz’s party could quickly descend into all-out panic.
Between the UK and Germany, the differences are striking. Reform UK has consistently drawn former Conservatives jumping ship – Robert Jenrick, Suella Braverman and, this week, yet another former Tory MP. This slow but steady drift of defections to the far-right populists has yet to take place in the Bundestag. The obvious question, then, is how long can the CDU can continue to hold the line?
In political circles, many an hour has been spent discussing the need for parties of the centre left and centre right to maintain a so-called constitutional firewall against the extremists. In fact, just the thought of the far-right taking power is so offensive to many German sensibilities that they will accommodate political differences so as to keep the AfD locked out of power. But Sunday’s result shows that strategy may now be overtaken by events, with the far-right already the second largest party in the Bundestag following last year’s federal elections.
All of this should therefore compel social democrats across Europe to tackle the causes of voter disillusionment with ‘the mainstream’ head-on.
For UK-German relations, this must mean a renewed focus on delivering the shared commitments on energy, migration and security agreed in last year’s Kensington Treaty. With the multilateral world order under threat, the UK and Germany have together chaired the Ukraine Defence Contact Group, deepened ties on deep strike missile capabilities, worked together to intercept people smugglers, and are focusing on renewables in the North Sea to insulate us from global shocks and Putin’s weaponisation of the energy markets.
As the nativist right rises in both France and Germany, the left must articulate an inescapable truth to voters: only by working with our European neighbours can we protect our economies from the dumping of goods, drive investment into energy production and transmission, maintain a coherent asylum process, and achieve the much-need growth so badly undermined by a series of seismic geopolitical shocks triggered far beyond our borders.
For too long, successive governments have not been bold enough in speaking to our bilateral achievements. Let us do more. For the future of both our nations, we have no other option.
