The future of Germany’s anti-AfD ‘firewall’ looks bleak

Berlin awoke this morning in a state of shock. Although opinion polls had predicted that the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) would do well in Sunday’s eastern state elections in Thuringia and Saxony, the cold reality that the anti-immigration, anti-Islamist party has topped the polls in Thuringia and come a close second in Saxony, takes some getting used to, even for cynical Berliners.

Mainstream center and leftist parties in Germany have vowed to form a ‘brandmauer’ (firewall) against the AfD

The German capital is a left-wing island surrounded by the sea of states of former East Germany, which are rapidly moving to the far right. The AfD scored more than 30 percent of the votes in both states Sunday; in three weeks, it will be the turn of Brandenburg, the state immediately abutting Berlin, to vote. It is expected to follow suit and hand another famous victory to the insurgent party.

Berlin has been the scene of frequent protests against the AfD in general, and its Thuringian leader Björn Höcke, in particular. But the results from overnight show that such demonstrations are out of sync with the feelings of many voters in eastern Germany.

Sunday’s results are complicated by the rise of another populist party — the Alliance of Sahra Wagenknecht, or BSW — this one with its roots on the far left. The party is named for its founder and leader Sahra Wagenknecht, a popular prominent former member of Die Linke, (“the Left”) the successor to the old ruling Communist Party in East Germany.

Eight months ago, Wagenknecht, seeing which way the wind was blowing, quit Die Linke and founded a new movement with traditional leftist social policies combined with opposition to mass immigration and Germany’s support for Ukraine against Russia: the core platforms of the AfD. The BSW took 14 percent of the vote in Thuringia, tapping into popular anti establishment feelings among voters for whom the AfD is too extreme.

Ironically, this new left-wing party now looks likely to form a local coalition with the center-right Christian Democrats (CDU), the main opposition party, which narrowly won in Saxony and came second to the AfD in Thuringia. This is because all the mainstream center and leftist parties in Germany have vowed to form a “brandmauer” (firewall) against the AfD and not cooperate with them in local or national government. How long such a firewall can be maintained now that one in three voters have backed the party in these elections is doubtful. 

Sunday’s elections surely make clear the fate of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s governing coalition who must face voters in next year’s general election and seem set to lose to the CDU. Scholz’s Social Democrats only just scraped into the state parliaments in Thuringia and Saxony, while his Green and liberal coalition partners failed to get in at all — not clearing the 5 percent threshold needed for representation.

If the elections are bad news for Scholz, they are bleak tidings for Sir Keir Starmer. The UK prime minister was in Berlin only last week on his much trumpeted bid to reset Britain’s relations with Europe after Brexit. With his social democratic ideological soulmates facing near defeat in next year’s elections, Starmer will have to get his skates on to seal the deal with Scholz before the German leader is out on his ear.

This article was originally published on The Spectator’s UK website.