‘AfD: What lessons should Labour draw from far-right success in Germany?’

Elections in two states in eastern Germany, Thuringia and Saxony provided results which pose a huge challenge to Labour’s sister party, the social democratic SPD of chancellor Olaf Scholz, but also raise important wider questions.

To start with the grim facts: in Thuringia, the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) topped the poll, scoring 32.8%: the first time this has happened in post-war Germany. The party is at its most extreme there, with its leader in the state, Björn Höcke, having twice been convicted of using banned Nazi slogans in the past year. In Saxony, it came second (behind the Christian Democratic CDU) with 30.6%.

The AfD stands for an unpleasant cocktail of historical revisionism, hostility towards refugees and Islamophobia, and an accommodating position towards Putin’s Russia –readers of the details of its policies will also note right-leaning economic policies but it tends not to trumpet these.

Crisis for the centre-left

A breakthrough was also made by a new left populist party, the Sarah Wagenknecht Alliance; Wagenknecht had been a leading light in the Left Party but parted company, arguing that the latter’s pro-refugee policies put it out of touch with grassroots supporters. She has also argued for negotiations with Putin to end the war in Ukraine.

The SPD scraped over the 5% hurdle for representation in both states (7.3% in Saxony, 6.1% in Thuringia), but on top of a record low in the European elections (13.9%) it looks a long way from any prospect of holding onto the chancellorship in 2025.

The detail of the results is bleaker still. The AfD scored best amongst younger voters in Thuringia (reaching 38% amongst 18 to 24 year olds; it also performed strongly amongst the same age group in Saxony, way ahead of other parties).

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Nearly 35 years since the fall of the Berlin wall, it is depressing that around three quarters of voters in both states reported feeling that easterners were treated as second class citizens (in spite of trillions of Euros of investment, financed substantially by a significant surcharge on income tax).

Some of this is specific to eastern Germany and its distinctive history. For instance, eastern voters have long been more sceptical of the scale of support for Ukraine, just as they were much more opposed to German involvement in the Kosovo conflict of 1999. But there are other factors that would be relevant to centre-left parties elsewhere, including the UK.  Parts of the east, notably in smaller towns and villages (where the AfD was strongest) have experienced depopulation, with younger people with the highest skill levels most likely to leave, limiting the opportunities for those left behind.

Right wing populism on the rise

In France, Italy and the UK, improving the opportunities and life-chances of those in economically stretched areas must surely have the highest priority (as an aside, achieving investment at the required scale is exceptionally difficult when German and EU debt rules are applied – another tricky conundrum for social democrats in Germany and beyond).

Social democrats in these regions have told me of the organisational challenges they face: party membership is low, but the political climate has also hardened, with doorstep campaigning regarded as too dangerous and the AfD having achieved a degree of social acceptability in sporting and voluntary groups important in many communities.

There should be no comparison between the AfD and Reform, but the decline of Labour organisation in some places where Reform came a strong second in 2024 looks a real problem in the light of the German experience.

Continent-wide consequences

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A German government looking in on itself is less likely to deliver leadership in Europe, even when faced with the geopolitical repercussions of a possible Trump presidency. Notwithstanding Keir Starmer’s successful visit to Berlin last week, German bandwidth to encourage a pragmatic EU approach to relations with the UK will also be more limited.

There may be some possibility of Scholz being replaced by another figure as the SPD’s chancellor candidate, most likely the popular defence minister Boris Pistorius, though at the moment Scholz appears safe, and the SPD will be sitting tight until a third state election on 22 September, in eastern Brandenburg – where it currently leads the government.

Lessons for the rest of Europe

For those of us who have seen post-war Germany as a force for good in Europe and the world, the events of Sunday were grim indeed. It remains crucial that analysis is fair and nuanced, and overseas observers don’t fall into lazy “all Germans are AfD supporters” cliches.

A clear majority of voters in Saxony and Thuringia did not want to see the AfD in government there, and the CDU and other democratic parties are likely to keep their “firewall” and refuse to let the AfD into government.  In January 2024, there were huge demonstrations against the far right across Germany.

Attending a mainstream music concert in rural western Germany days before the European elections, I was struck by the huge cheer from the crowd when the musician Peter Brings condemned the AfD as a “brown [Nazi-coloured] party”.

But these elections will make it harder for Germany to play a positive role in Europe, and send a powerful message about the risk of the far right taking advantage of the grievances felt in “left behind” regions. Social democrats across Europe would do well to take note.

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