Thuringia’s warning: the alarming rise of the far right in Germany and its implications for the UK

2 September 2024, 13:59 | Updated: 2 September 2024, 14:00

• Neal Lawson is the Director of cross-party campaign group Compass

By Neal Lawson

@Neal_Compass

The post war constitution of the German Federal Republic was devised carefully to ensure the far right could never become politically predominant within the country ever again.

Yesterday in Thuringia, the Alternative for Germany (AfD), a party that echoes too many of the tropes and tendencies of fascism, came first in the state’s election with almost 33% of the vote. This is the first time the AfD has topped a regional poll, and unless action is taken it won't be the last.

Britain is not immune. Last month saw far-right riots orchestrated in post-industrial towns across much of the middle and the north of the country.

Anti-immigration and Islamophobic sentiments have become widespread. Reform UK polled 14% in July and while it only came home with five seats, it is now second in 98, the vast majority of which are currently held by Labour.

That new Labour government bounced briefly, but now, less than two months in, it already feels mired in stories of economic gloom and cronyism.

If, after 14 years of failed Tory rule, Labour fails to improve the economy and public services sufficiently then this could turbocharge a shift to far-right politics here.

Of course, Britain has the first past the post voting system which is designed to suppress the votes of any smaller parties, left or right, and boost the two main parties.

This saw Labour win 63% of seats on only 34% of the vote. But this just masks the problem: both the weakness of Labour's electoral position and people’s declining trust in politics and democracy.

If nothing changes and nothing gets better enough then why bother believing in democracy? Just listen to those who tell you who to hate and who to follow.

Back in Germany, their system of voting by proportional representation at least ensures the far right can't win a majority of seats on only a third of the vote, as can happen here and could feasibly by Reform if things get bad enough.

But it isn't voting systems that will save us from fascism - it’s the recognition that politics must be pursued for different ends by different means.

It's not just Germany or the UK that has a problem. Nowhere across the globe are progressive parties on the front foot and exercising anything approaching a transformative project which gives people the security and hope they need.

Macron in France looks like a presidential dead duck, in Spain Pedro Sánchez’s Social Democratic government hangs on by its fingertips, and Australia’s much herald Labor government trails the right just a year before their elections.

Everywhere we see a doom loop in which old-style technocratic governments fail and let in the far right. Their governing prowess is limited too, but all they need to prosper further is for democratic institutions to be seen to fail.

As climate chaos, geopolitical eruptions and global markets spiral us out of control, the need for a much deeper democracy in the pursuit of a good society in which we're all much more equal and the planet is much more sustainable has never been more pressing.

The vote in Thuringia is just the latest and most dramatic straw in the wind of what happens when old politics fails people. Without the support of other parties, the AfD cannot govern in Thuringia, and the CDU, the mainstream right party has made clear it will not consider ruling with the far right.

While that may be right, it is a move that is likely to boost political dissatisfaction and fail to rebuild trust in mainstream parties.

Eventually, the far right won't be defeated by a politics that is too indebted to the strictures of neoliberal economics nor old-style socialist centralisation.

Only a new politics that is as egalitarian as it is democratic, in the pursuit of climate harmony, will fend off the rise of the new right. Let last month's riots and last night's vote be the last warnings we need.

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