Germany s future will be populist – spiked
In Germany, there is a saying that Wahltag ist Zahltag election day is payday, or the parties will reap what they have sown. This is precisely what happened to the three ruling parties in last week s European Parliament elections. Germans have cast a massive vote of no confidence in their government.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz s party, the Social Democrats (SPD), came third with a meagre 13.9 per cent of the vote. The Greens, the second party of the government coalition, were the biggest losers. Their vote share 11.9 per cent was a remarkable 8.6 percentage points lower than in the 2019 election.
Perhaps the most brutal humiliation for the government, though, has been the massive gains of the right-populist Alternative for Germany (AfD). The AfD came in second place, with almost 16 per cent (a gain of nearly five points since 2019). That makes the AfD stronger than any of the governing parties.
It is unlikely that the coalition, already weak and unpopular, will be able to recover from this shock. Scholz himself appeared to be in a kind of stupor on election night. He showed up at SPD headquarters, took some selfies with his few remaining supporters and then rejected all requests for comment from the media.
Old Olaf has been in a stupor for a while. I don’t understand the Germans. Their policies over the last few years have been apparently deliberately self-destructive. Their dismantling of their nuclear energy for instance. And immigration, obviously. Their deep state seems to be much more in charge than ours is and equally incompetent.