It Should Be A Belated Wake-Up Call For The UK Too…

If there was shock, it wasn’t immediately obvious. Mario Voigt, leader of the conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) in Thuringia, assumed the pose of an election winner, even though his party came second by some margin, with 24% of the vote. He announced he would begin coalition negotiations with other “parties of the democratic centre” – meaning without the AfD. In Saxony, where the CDU won narrowly, their leader, Michael Kretschmer, has also ruled out working with the AfD. In both states, this will require the centre-right party to build complex alliances with two or three leftwing parties.

Yes, it's the AfD's victory again, worrying all the right people in the left-wing press. 

Disgruntlement with mainstream politics was long treated as a peculiarity of the former East Germany, which included Saxony and Thuringia. The vice-president of the Bundestag, Katrin Göring-Eckardt of the Green party, herself a native Thuringian, was not alone in claiming that some east Germans are “stuck in dictatorship glorification”. Now Göring-Eckardt’s Greens have been kicked out of the Thuringian parliament and are polling at 11% nationally. Telling voters that their concerns aren’t real, it turns out, is not an election-winning strategy.

We'll have to see how it plays out in the UK next election, because I'm sure Sir Kier Stalin will try it. 

There were lively public debates everywhere in the buildup to the elections. People discussed politics at workplaces and at the kitchen table. Turnout was at a record high, with three-quarters of people casting their vote. East Germans are neither fed up with politics nor with democracy. They are fed up with not being taken seriously.

Ringing any bells, yet? 

The same applies to other demographics. A staggering 37% of young voters in Thuringia have voted for AfD. In Saxony it was 31%. Though higher than the national average, this is still in line with what we saw in the European parliamentary elections in June when the AfD beat all three parties of Scholz’s coalition in the 16-24 vote, coming second with 16% – just one percentage point behind the conservatives. The AfD also won the working-class vote by some margin in the European elections, but this fact gained little media attention and seems to have raised no eyebrows in the other political parties.

Ask Germans what their main concerns are. Immigration tops the list, followed by energy prices, war and the economy. The word I heard over and over again in recent months was angst. Given that a growing number of immigrants are being charged with violent crimes, which are on the rise, many feel this is an issue of safety.

Yes, this is definitly starting to seem very familar. 

These are uncomfortable topics to discuss, especially for left-leaning parties, but discussing them is exactly what they must do instead of handing a monopoly over those issues to the AfD. That is not the same as plunging into populism. If centrists don’t start a constructive debate on sensitive issues, nobody will. The response to the regional elections must be more than preventing a far-right takeover. This is a belated wake-up call for Germany’s mainstream parties. I hope it will be heard loud and clear in Berlin.

It needs to be heard in London too.