Germany is facing five crucial changes after earthquake election

OPINION

German is a language that its speakers know is never going to become the world’s chief means of spoken communication. And yet it has certain words which express simple concepts with more power than does any other language and hence find their way into English. One of those words is verboten, which roughly means “forbidden” or “not done”.

Until Sunday, voting for the right-wing ethnic nationalist party the AfD (Alternative fur Deutschland) was one of those informally forbidden things.

But it isn’t any more. Because the AfD has just finished runner-up in Germany’s general election, doubling its previous vote share to more than 20%. It has become the official opposition party in the German parliament.

Even in Germany, where war guilt (“Kollektivschuld”) is still a powerful force, a party of the nationalist right opposing mass immigration has caused an electoral earthquake.

Not only that, but the party that came top in the election, the traditionally centrist CDU, tacked to the right precisely to ward off an even bigger stampede to the AfD.

The man who will be Germany’s new Chancellor, Friedrich Merz, dumped the agenda of the CDU’s once-revered Angela Merkel. It was Merkel who in 2015 opened up Germany to a million asylum-seekers coming largely from the Middle East. Since then, two million more have arrived and public anxieties about the cultural impact, especially regarding attitudes to women and the rise of Islamist terrorism, has soared.

Merz has pledged to implement a ban on foreigners who lack the correct papers even being able to enter Germany. And immigration is not the only policy area where he is performing a U-turn. He is set to slow down Germany’s march towards carbon net zero, which is blamed by millions for causing high energy prices and deindustrialisation.

Germany may even get back into atomic energy in a big way under his leadership, following Merkel’s disastrous decision to close nuclear power plants and rely on imported Russian gas.

These right-wing darts by Merz were only just enough to fend off a takeover by the AfD. The CDU and its Bavarian regional ally the CSU got a combined vote share of 28.6%, only eight points ahead of the AfD.

Yet parties of the left did worse – much worse. The SPD, the establishment centre-left party of the now-outgoing Chancellor Olaf Scholz, saw its vote share plummet to a humiliating 16%. The Greens were also badly squeezed. A Corbynista-style party of the hard left made some gains, but not enough to change the basic maths.

So Merz will be the new leader of Germany, probably propped up in a coalition by SPD remnants. Even between them the CDU and the SPD, the two traditional powerhouse parties, will only have a majority of 26 – not so long ago it would have been hundreds. And if Merz allows his coalition partners to drag him back to the discredited “centre ground” then the AfD can surely look forward to taking power in 2029.

Across Europe the old order is collapsing while the nationalist right makes sweeping gains. Giorgia Meloni – once branded “Far Right” by most of Europe’s media - is in power in Italy. In the Netherlands anti-Islam firebrand Geert Wilders heads the electorate’s favourite party.

In France, Marine Le Pen will have her best ever chance of becoming president in 2027.

And all of this is happening while the future of Nato, the alliance with America which guaranteed Europe’s security for so long, is in growing doubt. That means military spending in European countries – including Germany, war guilt or not – will have to rise sharply. The European Union will have to change its ways too, or risk becoming the enemy of a new governing class across the continent.

Only in Britain, by a quirk of timing, does the old establishment still have some tarmac on the road ahead. We have more than 500 left-leaning MPs out of 650. But Nigel Farage and his Reform party – also smeared as “Far Right” by the likes of the BBC – lead in the polls.

The key issues are the same everywhere: the disasters brought about by mass third world immigration and the impact of the dash to net zero upon living standards and industrial employment.

In truth, the AfD does harbour a fringe which merits the term “Far Right”, but its leadership is in the hands of a more moderate faction. Rather than hurling insults at the party, as they still do against Reform in Britain and Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party, establishment politicians need to confront their own failings.

Seeking to maintain pariah status for those with new ideas isn’t working any longer. They are drinking in the last chance saloon. And it is almost closing time.