Germany

The German public have, as predicted, kept ahold of nurse. But it is the breakthrough of the AfD into the German Parliament that is causing headlines around the world. Of course the four-year old party’s electoral success is also unsurprising. In elections last September the AfD were elected to representative roles in most of the country’s regional assemblies and beat Merkel’s party into third place in her own constituency. Nevertheless, yesterday’s electoral breakthrough is stunning and the success of this four-year-old party is among other things now causing a predictable rash of 1930s analogies. In a media landscape where very few papers can afford any foreign coverage at all, and

Angela Merkel has won, for the fourth time, but on her party’s worst election result since 1949. Her main rivals did just as badly and the main winner looks like Alternative for Germany (AfD), now Germany’s no3 party. Here’s the national picture: So the centre-left Social Democratic Party is heading for just 20pc, its worst result since the Second World War.  Martin Schulz, SPD leader, said it has been “a difficult and bitter day for German social democracy”. By which he means that AfD are set to break through into the Bundestag with 13.5 per cent of the vote, a result that differs sharply in east and west. In the former East Germany, AfD is the second-largest party with

Last night’s TV debate between Angela Merkel and Martin Schulz poses a nagging question for British conservatives. No, nothing to do with Brexit – the subject wasn’t even mentioned. Rather, why was Theresa May so afraid of going toe to toe with Jeremy Corbyn before the General Election? If only she’d done a Merkel and faced off her main rival on television, she might have won a decent majority – just as Merkel looks set to do in three weeks’ time. Like May, Merkel is widely (and quite rightly) regarded as an uninspiring public speaker. Like Corbyn, Schulz is an assured performer, with a polished ‘man of the people’ shtick.

In the summer of 1990, the editor of The Spectator, Dominic Lawson, went to interview Nicholas Ridley, Margaret Thatcher’s Secretary of State for Industry, and asked him about the drive towards European Monetary Union. ‘This is all a German racket designed to take over the whole of Europe,’ said Ridley. ‘I’m not against giving up sovereignty in principle, but not to this lot. You might as well give it up to Adolf Hitler, frankly.’ The consequences of these comments were seismic. Thatcher demanded Ridley’s resignation, she resigned herself a few months later, and for a quarter of a century thereafter successive Prime Ministers did their utmost to distance themselves from

Angela Merkel has never been a showboating politician. Public speaking isn’t her forte – she prefers to work behind the scenes. That’s why her latest speech has made such big waves, on both sides of the Atlantic. The Washington Post said it marked the beginning of a ‘new chapter in US-European relations.’ The New York Times called it a ‘potentially seismic shift.’ Seasoned US diplomat Richard Haas described it as ‘a watershed’ in America’s relationship with Europe. So what did Merkel say? What did she mean by it? And what are the implications for Germany, and for Britain? Uttered by any other politician, Merkel’s speech last Sunday might not be

Once again, the pollsters got it wrong. Yesterday’s election in Saarland was supposed to be the beginning of the end for Angela Merkel, and the start of the SPD revival under their new leader Martin Schulz. And yet, against the odds, Merkel’s conservative CDU has beaten the left-leaning SPD by more than ten per cent, a result which bodes well for her election campaign this autumn, and her bid to win a record-breaking fourth term as Chancellor. Last week, the signs for Merkel’s CDU seemed pretty bleak. Saarland’s CDU leader, so-called ‘Mini Merkel’ Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, went into this election with just one more seat than the resurgent SPD. With two

I guess the hate crime epidemic that gripped Britain after Brexit hasn’t put that many people off, with new figures showing net migration of 273,000 in the three months to September 2016. That represents a decline of 49,000, of which 12,000 is due to an increase in eastern Europeans heading home (39,000, as opposed to 27,000 the previous year), which I imagine is less to do with any hostile atmosphere in Britain than the booming economy in Poland. No doubt that’s the way it will be presented, though – ‘Poles fleeing the Brexit terror’. In my view, the Government is doing a lot of things wrong at the moment, chiefly