Today, Germany faces a test at its 2025 federal election. Following the atrocities of the National Socialists, will enough Germans be willing to support far-right politics to the extent that the Eurosceptic, anti-immigration and Islamophobic Alternative für Deutschland could become a major player in German politics.

Based on current polling, the left-leaning traffic light coalition – comprising the Social Democrats, the Free Democrats and Alliance 90/The Greens – is likely to collapse and the conservative Union parties positioned to lead the next government. AfD is currently polling in a strong second place, potentially able to form a right-leaning midnight coalition with the Union parties. However, as it is subject to a cordon sanitaire, a Union-SPD grand coalition is the most likely – and most favoured – outcome of this election.

Under the rules of Germany’s mixed-member proportional system, our sister party the Free Democrats may be evicted from the Bundestag. Deputies are elected either through single-member constituencies under First Past the Post or through a national list, with parties needing to win five per cent of the national vote to be guaranteed representation via the latter. Sadly, the FDP is polling below this threshold. Based on current polling, other parties that could win Bundestag representation and thus serve as potential non-AfD coalition partners include the Greens, Die Linke, and Reason and Justice.

However, if AfD is left out of government, the formation of a grand coalition or equivalent (blackberry or Kenya) could see the party gain a beneficial position as the official opposition. If a Union-SPD-led coalition is unable to tackle many of the problems facing Germany, such as inflation or deindustrialisation, AfD will be able to criticise it and lay the groundwork for a victory at the next election.

Whatever the results of Germany’s federal election, they should serve as a salutary lesson to us Liberal Democrats going into the next general election. Like Germany, the UK has an unpopular left-leaning (Labour) government and an insurgent far-right populist party (Reform UK) with a groundswell of support. However, unlike Germany, our major social democratic party is governing alone, the UK uses FPTP for its national elections, and the right-wing populist party rather than the traditional conservative party has been leading in many polls. In fact, some projections suggest that Reform could form a government in its own right with only a quarter of the national vote.

The ‘C word’ is not one that we as Liberal Democrats want to readily countenance, given the harsh consequences of our actions from 2010 to 2015, from which we are only now recovering. However, given the distortive effect of FPTP, declining support for the two major parties of the past century and greater desires for multiparty politics, a hung parliament and a coalition government may be the likely – and perhaps more desirable – result of the next election.

The two animals featured in the title are in fact acronyms. GNU stands for ‘Government of National Unity’ while GOAT stands for ‘Government of All Talents’, with both referring to cross-party ministries. In the UK, these have been formed in response to national crises, such as world war or economic depression. One was even proposed to avoid Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal. If we believe that a Reform-led government and a Farage premiership to be just as dangerous, would a rainbow coalition to which we would be party serve as a palatable alternative? Would it merely bolster Reform’s anti-establishment credentials? Would it be as harmful to us as the Cameron-Clegg coalition? That may well depend on what approach is taken.

Provided that Reform win only the largest plurality of seats, would the Conservatives enter coalition as their junior partner? Pretty unlikely. It would be an admission of defeat, and possibly the prelude to a merger, as had happened to Canada’s Progressive Conservatives after 1993. If Reform are unable to find willing coalition partners, the creation of a GNU would be a more palatable alternative to a second election which they could win outright. It was this route that saw Geert Wilder’s Freedom Party locked out of government following the 2023 Dutch election. Naturally, if we were to support the former path, we would need to avoid the mistakes of the 2010 negotiations, avoiding red lines and playing hard ball for policy concessions.

If what has been said is inconceivable, it may be worthwhile for our party to consider how to challenge Reform UK in addition to the Conservatives, Labour and the Greens. Ignoring their floating supporters entirely runs the risk of bolstering Reform’s claims that they represent ‘forgotten Britain’. However, this should not be done by chasing Reform’s policy agenda.

* Samuel James Jackson is the Chair of the Policy Committee of the Yorkshire and the Humber Liberal Democrats and had served as the Liberal Democratic candidate in Halifax during the 2024 general election.