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Politicians who are strongly opposed to immigration – who are sometimes supportive of Vladimir Putin, usually sceptical about the European Union and often described as “populist” – have been gaining ground across Europe for some years.
The expected advance of Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD) in the German federal election this weekend is not, therefore, evidence of some new phenomenon that the traditional parties struggle to understand.
Viktor Orban has been prime minister of Hungary since 2010. Giorgia Meloni became prime minister of Italy three years ago. There are right-wing “populist” governments in Austria and Slovakia. Geert Wilders’s Freedom Party is the largest party in the Netherlands parliament and part of a four-party coalition government. Marine le Pen’s party is the main opposition in the French parliament.
In Britain, the success of the pro-EU centre-left Labour Party in last year’s election only temporarily obscured the rise of a similar anti-immigration populism in the years before the EU referendum of 2016.
It may be that the AfD is different in kind as well as perhaps in degree; that it is more of a sinister threat to liberal democratic values. Or it may be that the sensitivities about Germany’s past make it seem so.
But the important point about the AfD is that it is no more likely to be part of the government of Germany after these elections than it was before. Friedrich Merz, the leader of the Christian Democrats, has made it clear that he would rather lead a grand coalition with the Social Democrats than rely on the support of the AfD for a government exclusively of “the right”.
And the broader point about this election, as with so many across Europe, is that there is no mystery about how to fight the kind of politics that the AfD represents. The German economy has stagnated, which means that the historic error of Angela Merkel in allowing immigration on an unprecedented scale 10 years ago has returned to haunt her successors.
The Independent is in favour of immigration under fair rules and at sustainable levels. A certain amount of immigration is not only a good thing but essential to a successful, dynamic, open economy. However, Ms Merkel overdid it, just as Boris Johnson lost control of immigration in Britain more recently.
And neither the German economy nor the British has been able to offer the improvements to the standard of living that their citizens expected since the pandemic. This malaise has been disastrous for incumbent governments the world over and it would seem that Olaf Scholz, who has been German chancellor for three and a half years, is no exception.
It does mean, however, that it is possible to defeat the politics of the AfD – as well as the sometimes similar politics of the extreme so-called left, in Germany’s case that of the pro-Russian BSW, the breakaway from Die Linke which is struggling to win the five per cent share of the vote that would guarantee seats in the Bundestag.
The parties of the mainstream know what they have to do: they have to offer the voters hope – the hope of prosperity, decent public services and fair rules on immigration.
It is a terrible paradox that the most serious threat to the values of liberal democratic Europe, including the right of the Ukrainian people to decide their own future, should come not from the likes of the AfD but from outside: from US president Donald Trump.
