Tag Archives: governmenet

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.