In Germany, immigration has captured the election campaign. Credit: Getty
He came from Afghanistan through Bulgaria, where he had registered his claim for asylum. In 2022, he travelled through the EU’s open borders to Germany where he settled in the north-western Bavarian town of Aschaffenburg. Last Wednesday, the man, now 28 years old, walked into a park in the city centre where he knifed a two-year-old boy to death, injured two other children, and then killed the 41-year-old man who had tried to stop him. He was finally intercepted by the police at a nearby rail track after a short chase.
The shocking attack has reignited the debate about immigration only weeks before the German federal elections on February 23, and exposed the weakness of its political elites. Friedrich Merz, the leader of the CDU opposition and front-runner in the race to be chancellor, will propose legislation this week to permanently end free movement across all of Germany’s borders. Radical enough in itself, such a change would signal the end of the political firewall, or Brandmauer, his party had erected against the far-Right Alternative for Germany. The firewall is a pledge among the mainstream parties that there would be no co-operation with the AfD under any circumstances — no coalition, no confidence and supply agreement, and no joint legislation at federal level.
Previously, the CDU had rejected an offer from AfD co-leader Alice Weidel to vote together for a change in asylum policy, committing to pull its support for any law that would only pass with the votes of the AfD. Now things have changed. As Merz put it: “I am no longer willing to refrain from putting the right thing to the vote in the German Bundestag just because the wrong people might agree to it.”
Merz then went even further, doubling down with another pledge. He said, echoing Donald Trump, that if elected chancellor, he would pass an executive order on his first day in office to reintroduce border controls. German chancellors, however, are not as powerful as US presidents. Proportional representation means they have to co-opt other parties into coalitions. And there is no way that his potential centrist partners would accept such an executive order — the coalition would fracture on day one. And so the CDU leader has, effectively, erected a new firewall — this time against the other parties. There are only two scenarios whereby he could enact what he promises: either, he wins an absolute majority, which not a single German poll predicts. Or, he co-operates with the AfD.
This seemingly local debate about immigration has important ramifications for the EU project as a whole. For if Merz were to re-introduce border controls, this would permanently end the EU’s Schengen passport-free travel system — one of the significant achievements of integration, along with the euro and the single market. If Germany were to resurrect passport controls to keep out refugees, all its immediate neighbours, and their neighbours, would have to do the same, because nobody wants to be stranded with its rejected refugees. Schengen — which includes 29 European countries — would collapse within hours. To solve the problem of illegal immigrants would require a fully functioning European immigration policy. There is no chance of that happening either. And so, for the EU, this would be worse than Brexit; it would mark the first step towards the disintegration of the entire EU project.
Friedrich Merz is an impulsive politician with lots of good ideas. He was enjoying a secure lead in the polls, strong on national security and on the economy. He is the only senior German politician who understands at a deep level that his country’s economic model is broken. A critic of Germany’s digital protectionism, he has a better grasp of 21st-century technologies than any of his peers. But nobody is talking about his ideas for economic transformation and innovation now because everybody is now talking about immigration and firewalls.
Voters know that given Germany’s system of proportional representation, parties can promise whatever they want but it is the coalitions that decide. They also know that Merz will almost surely go into a coalition with a centrist party, like the Social Democrats or the Greens, neither of which support permanent border controls. If current polls are right, the CDU will have to govern with at least one of them, possibly both. The more parties, the harder the coalition talks will be, and the less of his agenda Merz will be able to implement.
There are moments in politics when politicians have to take big risks. But this was not one of them: it would have been enough for him to promise a review of immigration policies. When you make up policies on the hoof like this, people are bound to question your sincerity. After all, it was only a little over a week ago when he told a campaign rally to loud applause that “one 1933 is enough for Germany”. This was a reference to the year when Hitler came to power. He was essentially comparing the AfD to the Nazis. Until Wednesday, his firewall was a firmament of German politics. Today, people are no longer sure whether it still stands.
Austria just showed us how fast a firewall can crumble. The centre-right Austrian People’s Party had one in place against the far-Right Freedom Party, the winner in last year’s election. Karl Nehammer, the former Austrian chancellor and leader of the People’s Party, wanted to negotiate a “losers’ coalition” with the Social Democrats and a small liberal party. But the negotiations failed because Nehammer, like Merz, insisted on immigration policies that were tougher than the centrists could stomach. After the talks collapsed at the beginning of this month, Nehammer resigned both as chancellor and party chairman. His party has now agreed to collapse the firewall and form a coalition with the Freedom Party. Its leader, Herbert Kickl, will become the next chancellor.
What happened in Austria is that two competing red lines clashed. If Merz ended up in a position where he would need both the SPD and the Greens to form a coalition, there is no way he could implement his immigration policies. If as in Austria, the German negotiations also ended with no deal, then the only viable coalition option would be for the CDU to form a coalition with the AfD, or a minority government with the support of the AfD.
Most probably, Merz’s high-risk gamble will end up with him having to eat his words and cobble together another centrist coalition with the same old parties and same old policies that failed in the past. In this scenario, the AfD would become the main opposition party, with a strong chance of winning the 2029 elections. Weidel would stand a good chance of becoming the next chancellor. In both scenarios the AfD wins.
But this iteration of the AfD is a far cry from the party which started out 12 years ago as a conservative-libertarian group, founded by economics professors who wanted Germany to leave the euro. Today, the professors are long gone, displaced by nationalists, including some who are close to the neo-Nazi movement. Weidel herself is not in that camp. But nor is she a Javier Milei or an Elon Musk. Weidel’s party, though popular with the younger generation — and with Musk, who appeared at an AfD rally at the weekend to decry multiculturalism — supports a return to Russian gas and heavy industry. The AfD may claim to understand new technology, but it is not a party of innovation.
My message to all libertarian conservatives, then, is to be careful what you wish for. The AfD is a party that would not have you as a member. But the increasingly desperate attempt to keep them away from power is what sits at the heart of Germany’s dysfunction and prevents it from addressing its economic paralysis.
Sweden, Finland, and the Netherlands have no firewalls. These countries are governed by coalitions of the centre-right and the far-Right. Austria will soon join them. It was a choice the voters in those countries have made. They will make other choices in the future. A firewall would have deprived them of the choice.
If as a German voter, you wanted change in economic policy, there is currently no path for such a preference to be implemented. No matter how you vote, you always end up with the same homogenised centrist policies. Ending the firewall is the only way to prise open the failing political cartel which has Germany — and the EU — in its suffocating grasp.
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Subscribe‘… it would mark the first step towards the disintegration of the entire EU project.’ Super.
Surely Brexit was the first step in the EU’s inevitable disintegration?
A major contributor left the “club” despite the threats and bullying of the EU, and Obama’s USA.
A further “brick out of the wall” was the West’s (including the EU) failed play in Ukraine which mess the EU is likely to have left on its mat, but it doesn’t have the wherewithal to clear it up.
Whilst Britain was deluded about its power and importance after WW2, that fantasy pales into insignificance compared to this current clown show.
Maybe, but the prevailing continentals are never going to give Britain credit for their liberation anymore than they like to have to WW2.
Having met a Dutch resistance (at the time teenage) fighter several decades ago, I can assure you Brits were seen as liberators and grateful they were too.
Phased out over time.
Merz is a smart politician. He wants to get rid of the Merkel era in German politics. He might be able to form a coalition only with the liberal party FDP, which means 35%. then with the AfD:s 19-20% in der Bundestag, he has a majority.
But why not do like they did in Finland? The idea of Brandmauer is not democratic the Finns said and let the extremright “True Finns” in from the cold by giving them a post as a minister, responsible for the labour market!
Schengen was originally a treaty between Belgium, Netherland and Luxembourg. The Nordic counties already in the 50-ies had a common labour market. Of course, this was long before the hords of muslims flooded Europe.
Moreover, what a load of rubbish iconcerning the UK in this field of comments!
The EU is in trouble anyway.
Nothing going on in Europe sounds very good these day – to me it is bizarre that the EU still exists at all.
Is it just a tourist museum ? And Tommy Robinson sits in prison.
An entirely appropriate place for him.
The EU leaders have spoken badly about and alienated themselves from Trump, started a trade war with China, insisted on pushing LGBTQ in Africa, cut themselves off from cheap gas in Russia. They have isolated themselves and their nations from the world and have made Europe a coalition of losers. Losers presiding over decline, ever more dangerous cities, growing poverty and hopelessness, who cling to power through censorship, seeking to control through losing and dishonest narratives, stealing elections in Romania, and gnashing their teeth when countries like Hungary point out common sense policies and the only way forward. It is becoming clear that garden is run by rats! Unelected, unaccountable rats who control the policies of the nation states under them through threats because of debt, and control of the common currency. The whole thing is held together because of NATO. Failing, humiliated and inept NATO (where your own NATO allies blow up your pipeline and you do nothing) is the reason for the EU, and the EU rules by it’s common currency, the Euro which is why Ursula could say before Meloni was elected in Italy that Europe has “the tools” to deal with Italy if things go in a “difficult direction.”
Isn’t ‘a garden overrun by rats’ a Russian expression?
No
Whatever the source, it is a good metaphor.
It does sound Russian though….
Some of your statements are true, but “your own NATO allies blow up your pipeline and you do nothing” casts doubt on your sanity.
Well who do you think blew it up?
Most likely, the Ukrainians. And they had every right to do so. They also have every right to blow up the Crimean Bridge.
Now, whether the Russians have the right to tear up the cables connecting the Scandinavian countries in the Baltic Sea is a much more interesting question.
No nation does these things because they have “the right” to do them. Pipelines, bridges, and undersea cables are destroyed to maneuver yourself into a good position.
Irrespective of who did it, the Nordstream explosion was a most fortuitous occurrence.
The Ukrainians may have a ‘right’ to attack their allies’ infrastructure, but it’s a supremely stupid thing to do. German support for their futile war is weaker than ever.
What about the country who said more than once from more than one government official that it would be taken care of? Then, it was taken care of… What are the odds that they did it? The country with the most technical ability to do so, who said before hand it would be done… What I am getting at is, what about making the obvious choice the obvious choice? Duh, That is the the elephant in the room, not the 5 different stories that were told, and then finally deciding that some drunk Ukrainians on a sailboat did it. 😀
Who cares who did it? It was an entirely good thing! If I find those responsible, I will buy them beer!
Maybe, but Germany’s ability to buy gas from Russia is now pretty much non-existent.
The EU is a stumbling block to anything productive. But this is the prevailing attitude …. do nothing while the house burns hoping someone else will do the dirty work. Even the Brexit vote and the actual move hasn’t moved that prevailing attitude. Immigration is the sole reason it passed, and nothing has changed. The Muslim migrants need to be expelled. It won’t need to be a full on Crusades, but something like it. The migrants have to go because Islam is not compatible with European values, even the shi**y attitude that prevails now doesn’t allow for Sharia law courts everywhere. It’s called the Lebanonaztion of a country where the most powerful actors are not even under state control – Hezbollah.
Yes – Hezbollah. I’ll bet if you check under some of the mosques you’ll find weapons caches and tunnels. Europe is no longer Dar-al-Harb, it is Dar-al-Islam.
Glad there is no need for a full on Crusade – sacking Byzantium (now Istanbul) en route would not be a good look.
Yeah, especially as I’m going there at Easter! I suppose I could sack the place just before I fly home….
Bravo!!
So much Russian drivel. Does Putin pay you by the word, Vlad?
But the negotiations failed because Nehammer, like Merz, insisted on immigration policies that were tougher than the centrists could stomach.
I assume that “centrists” mean the Neos and the SPÖ. I think the Neos would have accepted the ÖVP’s demands on immigration – the SPÖ was the problem and that disagreement on a key issue has now dripped down to poison the well of Viennese politics: the Viennese election (on municipal and district level) which was scheduled for autumn has been pulled forward to April. The SPÖ has been governing with the Neos here for the past few years without much upset and I can’t think of any reason why this coalition should have broken down earlier other than a row about the coalition talks on federal level.
The Neos are quite pragmatic. The SPÖ on the other hand, is led by a foolish person called Andreas Babler who I am not sure has actually been to Austria in the last 10 years. Even people I know from within the party think he’s dreadful.
About Germany: it’s going to be four more years of the same. The frustration level is already unsustainable and I fear that faith in democracy and institutions is going to be irreversibly lost and people are going to start taking matters into their own hands soon. This may be the price of clinging onto the firewall.
The rising anger (and even larent violence) inferred by your phrase “taking matters into their own hands” is palpable in.the UK as well. I have been struck by what people are increasingly prepared to say in private conversations. The latest polling data showing Reform in two polls ahead of Labour is being driven by.non-voters at the last election. There is a slight whiff of political Brexit 2.0 in the air, but this time with intent and no tolerance for uniparty prevarication and incompetence. My cultural read is that more civil unrest seems inevitable at this point. The most widely expressed emotion I heard in London in response to Trump’s.tsunami of Executive orders last week was envy.
With regard to your last sentence, that has been my experience too. People are looking at that decisiveness in Washington D.C. and thinking: that’s the way to do it! Can we have that too?
Merz seems to think that too but he’s going to box himself in on the implementation. This is not going to end well at all.
Hopefully the ‘decisiveness’ will not be drowned by the ‘democracy’ of the 3 way checks and balances of the SCOTUS and Congress. When strong legislation is well-crafted, rooted in the Constitution, and defensible as to Due Process, the growing Islamic factions will be persona-non-grata. The bold Executive Order to end birthright citizenship needs the Congresses endorsement to make sense of the Constitutional powers to delineate deportation and imprisonment policy that an be enforced even in sanctuary states.
The Hispanic influx isn’t such a problem, although we should stop draining Latin America of its strong members. But the criminals and Muslims should be deported. Islam by definition is as bad as a criminal record. It can be expunged but that has to be done by the person themselves.
How about deporting ALL the immigrants and their descendants – say, any who arrived after 1492CE? Of course the number of descendants of those who left Europe to avoid poverty would run in to the tens of millions…
That emotion is also expressed in more provincial places in the UK too. I don’t think the political class realise how far out of touch they are. This year could be a bit of a rollercoaster.
By “provincial”, do you mean beyond the big cities; or just outside London?
“Out of touch” certainly seems to be the case viewed from here in Devon. I doubted a year ago they could be worse than the Tories, but have never in over 50 years as a voter known a government both so inept and self-satisfied at the same time. Buyer’s remorse squared.
I’m in a city at the centre of a rural county and see people from the city, rural and small towns. So many are being quite outspoken about the current government and the alternatives, if they don’t open their eyes and ears, we could find a very volatile electorate.
Yes i get that from UK family and business contacts. The regime there seems so dull they simply can’t understand that preventing peacful change is the one sure way of making violent change inevitable. A comment here called the EU “a clown show” – very accurate! UK is beyond that – “pig circus” seems right to me. I think this is because in EU most citizens have a high degree of national pride – certainly in Spain this is true of the democratic socialist movement as much as it is the centre & right wing ones. Clearly the PCE – ( commies) and CNT (anarchists) are exceptions – but a tiny minority of the country. Loony lefties like that are a very big minority in the UK and as per any movement opposed to democracy and the rule of law are apt to turn violent if their power/income is threatened. I think more involvement, even control of Greenland, Panama or even Canada makes sense BUT liberating the Brits from their craven regime is IMO the Most Important Thing.
Your last sentence is just bizarre. I’m not sure what Greenland, Panama or Canada have to do with the rest of your comment, and to flippantly hand over sovereign nations to (one assumes) the U.S., because it “makes sense”, shows a callous disregard for the right of such nations to self-determination. A war is currently being fought in Ukraine over this issue, if you haven’t noticed.
Wow, and you’re hearing that in London. Imagine what you’d be hearing in places that wouldn’t elect Sadiq Khan as mayor.
In the end, the negotiations in Austria broke down over the introduction of an inheritance tax, raising the factual retirement age to 65, and a bank levy; they had an agreement on immigration policies.
I’m not sure how big a role the differences of opinion on immigration played in the failure of the original coalition negotiations in Austria. There is also the matter of a huge budget deficit to deal with, and disagreement on how best to deal with it would have scuttled the talks even if all three parties were on the same page immigration-wise (which they’re not).
Sorry, but the SPD (most certainly left and almost far left as they are no longer the SPD of old), and the Greens (definitely far left if not extreme left) are in no way shape or form centrist parties. Not a snowballs chance in hell!
Whether Germany likes it or not, they have to come to terms with the fact that multiculturalism not only failed, but it is also dangerous. Now I get that the Nazis are extreme right and I don’t particularly care about that. They were a crazy bunch of nutbags who were very dangerous and damaging to Germany and Europe. The two most damaging aspects were their rabid antisemitism and their interest in bringing in Islam to replace Christianity in order to radicalise people into taking over the world at the point of a sword! (One of the reasons people laughed at Pergida, Neo-Nazis wanting something directly opposed to Hitlers wishes. Who doesn’t love the irony)
Standing back and seeing the actions and policies of the German political parties, the Greens are the closest thing to the Nazis, and the SPD are not far behind.
It stuns me that people cannot see this.
Hitler was a National Socialist. How is that Far Right?
Out of interest do you think Tommy Robinson is Far Right too? If so why?
Sorry Richard, but that was not the crux of my point.
In a nutshell, I think that the SPD and the Greens are far left and extreme left.
However, if any political party in today’s Germany aligns with Hitlers wish to change Germany to the way he wanted it, it is most certainly the Greens.
If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck then it is a duck, whatever it may call itself, even if that includes ‘socialist’.
Nazi party was, to be balanced about it, a mix of far right and far left ideals. In so far as we view nationalism on the political spectrum they were far right, but economically they were probably the best attempt at implementing far left socialism we’ve seen to date, socialism at the end of the barrel of a gun.
Which is why the Nazis and Islam is a match made in heaven, or hell for the rest of us.
This just shows that the right/left divide is just not fit for purpose. Me personally, I prefer moderate/extremist. It just seems to make more sense to me.
Couldn’t agree more. Calling the Greens and the current SPD centrist parties made my toes curl. The current crop of SPD leaders are corrupt (Scholz, as former mayor of Hamburg, was deeply involved in the cum-ex tax fraud ), totally incompetent (Health Minister Lauterbach) and far to the left ( like SPD’s leader Saskia Esken) of the former party.
The Green Party is a Marxist environmental Party, which I would place into the far-left corner of the German political spectrum, together with the “Linke”. I also would like Münchau to elaborate, why he thinks, that the AfD’s economic manifesto is not libertarian. One leading member of the AfD, Beatrix von Storch, even went to Argentina and met up with Milei. I just find it so tiresome, when Merz again compared the entire party to Hitler and the Nazis. Can’t we just move on from 1933…
So far nobody really knows, what Merz stands for. One week he distances himself from the Greens’ disastrous economic policies and the next he considers them as a potential coalition partner. Many Germans were desperately hoping, that Merz will lead Germany away from Merkel’s harmful “Energie Wende” and return to realistic energy and economic policies. But he flip flops and recently even flattered the total incompetent Merkel puppet Ursula von der Leyen, who supports all the “Green” nirvana policies and insists on the Digital Service Act, which curbs Freedom of Speech.
The article is sound, but I hesitated when I read that Schengen was apparently “one of the significant EU achievements of integration, along with the euro”. I’m not sure either of those can really be considered “achievements”.
Wolfgang, I appreciate that you always try to steel man the argument for the side you disagree with and don’t resort to facile name calling or straw man nonsense. Really enjoyed the article again, this German election isn’t very important, but the next one decides the fate of the EU.
Why do you say that it is the next election that is important
Because the centre will hold this time for sure, expect an unhappy traffic light coalition. But the next election, after more years of migration trouble, energy crisis, and economic stagnation, could see the AfD actually achieve power.
I had to look up Steel Man Argument there – you’re right, that’s exactly what Wolfgang does. Thanks – I’ve learnt something today!
That would be according to the pro EU elites
The AfD support remigrationwhich is becoming increasingly popular.
That wonderful German word SCHADENFREUDE springs to mind!
Why the downticks?
Where?
There seems to have been some revision of the voting system since yesterday!
This is all new to me.
Many people have said it but getting this author to write a weekly column is a big win for Unherd.
The EU’s “managed democracy” in action yet again. You’re free to choose … provided you don’t make the wrong choice. It can’t end well if they persist in this stupidity.
In some sense, this comes down to political censorship. A small cadre of apparatchicks deciding which views are acceptable and which are not and drawing the line ever closer to exclude those they personally (or more likely tribally as a group) dislike.
They don’t recognise the fact that parties like the AfD exist to meet the unmet needs of a large percentage of voters who are being ignored. And that such parties are a necessary feature of a working democracy and act as a useful pressure valve when established parties lose the plot and start focusing on issues many voters either don’t think important or strongly oppose.
The EU seems to think such views can be “administrated away”. Keir Starmer that they can be legislated away. The poor deluded fools.
We need to start calling out CDU/SPD/Marcon/Starmer/Harris for what they are:
Very Hard Line Centrists.
Economically comfortable with Neo-Liberal policies and Socially Progressive extremists. Both eating away at middle classes now the working classes were sold out.
They prefer unlimited immigration to suit both Liberal positions, are suspicious of the nation state (even though it is Their Job) and wish to pool ‘sovereigty’ to supra national bodies to avoid hard choices at home.
And they then call anything which deviates from this – Hard Right, Hard Left, ists/phobes or populists.
Turn it on them.
When you consider: colour revolution in Slovakia, sticks and carrot use of funds (Hungary and Poland respectively) to force compliance, virtual destruction of the 5th Republic to stop RN in France, lawfare against Le Pen for alleged misuse of funds, serious consideration to banning AfD in Germany. I’m not sure “hard line centrist” adequately describes those antics.
Exactly. The saying, “fascists are as fascists do” comes to mind…
The EU project is in a state of collapse, it isn’t going to be pretty when one of its main pillars collapses, the euro.
Why do you believe it will collapse? Yes it is a fiat currency, but so are all of the others…
The only “secure” one is the US$ which, although fiat, enjoys the exorbitant privilege of being the world’s reserve currency.
As an American, I couldn’t agree more – and I will also say, due to its abusing that privilege, it’s a privilege it does not deserve.
Like the gold chain around the Zuni warrior’s neck, the gold standard was the only restraint preventing the kind of profligacy and abuse our president(s) and Congress have foisted on their own citizens and the world. Interestingly, DJT – who always seems to be three moves ahead of his opponents – has promoted the idea of accumulating Bitcoin as a national reserve currency. A few years ago I did a two-week class in Bitcoin from none other than Gary Gensler, later the Biden-era SEC chairman. From all appearances it is impervious to any government’s manipulation, and is therefore anathema. While not suited to small individual transactions, it may just be the answer to the abuses of fiat. Prediction, though, is difficult, especially when it involves the future.
Up to now Germany was more or less the guarantor of the currency. The whole Maastricht Treaty is about the Euro becoming a “hard currency” like the Deutsche Mark. Under Merkel’s leadership, the Euro was mainly supported by Germany with huge Rescue Packages, which actually led to the formation of the new party AfD, which originally wanted to split the Euro into a Northern and Southern currency. Once the paymaster’s economy collapses, the Euro might be also in deep trouble.
The survival of the euro depends on the willingness of the Germans to go on heavily subsidising the French. That, in turn, depends on the viability of German manufacturing in the face of intense competition from China and crippling energy costs.
It’s not looking good.
What is it with Unherd and their incapacity to say what is going on.
Why are young children being targeted now?
Why is this ignored?
What on earth are you on about?
A really interesting article. I look forward to reading more.
Lets hope brere Goth and Hun do the heavy lifting like they did versus the Romans. The writer says “the shocking attack has re-ignited the debate”. I think “the shocking tactics” is apposite. Quite a few mentally ill native Westerners do murderous armed rampages. The imported ones differ by their status as a group or movement – their flag or uniform if you will, though I am sure there are psychos in any armed force. Note the imported/curated lone wolf brigade seem to represent the sentiments and ideas of lefties and their jihadi fellow travellers. Though horrific for the victims and their families these proxies and their curators are playing into the hands of their opponents. The leftists/jihadi caucus has some success undermining our civic order through indirect attacks – covid, drug cartels, curated sex offenders. They also benefit from perverting or distorting education and popular culture. Their capital error, it seems, is chumming up to the lone wolves and organised groups involved in sexual exploitation & low level drug crime. This may be their “Stalingrad” moment – where overreach in hubris sows the seeds of nemesis. Regimes that use their resources to carry out hate based policies have nothing left in the tank to defend themselves, and their gullible public will soon have second thoughts when they run out of food. Nothing says “buyers’ remorse” like the food queues in 1944 Germany.
Germany, and Europe, need to realize that blindly rejecting their past is as stupid as blindly clinging to their past. No, it’s actually more stupid. The past is a map of how we got to where we are today. Throw that away and there’s no guarantee we’ll even make it back to this place (for better or worse.)
And how we in the UK got to where we are today includes the effects of migrating all over the world – sometimes settling in numbers, sometimes not – and conquering an Empire. Some of what we are experiencing to day is basically Imperial blowback. Yet those who don’t like it still seem to glorify the Empire.
Let’s hope the EU does indeed collapse before Starmer takes us back in.
If Starmer takes us back in, the EU probably will not collapse, because the commissioners are very clever negotiators and would make sure UK would pay heavily and all the benefit would be for the EU. So nothing will have changed, so for ever £100 we give the EU we would get £20 back if we’re lucky, that sort of economics would probably suit Rachel From Accounts.
It takes time ( even longer if “The entitled ones mimic King Canute )
But eventually Reality rules . It is a law of nature .
I agree with Wolfgang here. A firewall does deprive the German people of their choice and is in effect a denial of the free exchange of ideas at the electoral level.
Democracy is superior to technocracy because it is fluid and adaptable and ought to be respected for its fluidity and adaptability rather than be constrained by centrist bigotry.
The extremely disturbing example of a nonwhite refugee stabbing to death a two year old is a direct product of unsustainable population growth in a country that has a pretty deep ecological deficit.
https://data.footprintnetwork.org/#/??_ga=2.184355247.860331481.1726890674-847383738.1726890674
This means the population requires high levels of urban densification to avoid squeezing out agricultural land alongside an increasingly competitive social environment over a diminishing resource base, especially that cheap Russian gas and oil is no longer available.
These are the sort of dynamics highlighted by the science of population ecology and should be an integrated feature of the knowledge systems that inform democratic choice.
The Centrists however are in denial of natural sciences because they are too caught up in ideological bigotry.
It is time for change in terms of allowing the dynamics of population ecology to be an integrated part of the free exchange of ideas.
When you import the third world, your country looks like the third world.
“…this would permanently end the EU’s Schengen passport-free travel system”
I’m sad about this. It would have been a wonderful thing, if not for unfiltered third-world immigration. Immigration would have been fine, but invasion levels?
Munchau though astute and perceptive is still shaped by his background as a an FT journalist. I studied in Germany back in the 90s and I am always interested in what’s going on there. My favourite analyst of German politics is Eugypius, an anonymous substack writer whose mordant wit and coruscating takedown of the personalities in german politics, media and academia are as sharp and insightful as anything out there. Eugypius started off writing about the lockdown period and the way it couples hyper-migration and eco- lunacy as the biggest threats to democracy. These threats come from the authoritarian left but the elite have convinced themselves that the far right are ready to March within Nazi banners. He has been particularly prescient on the rise of the AFD.
The moral cowadice of this generation is utterly deplorable. ”But, but, but, the AFD are far-Right”.
Cowed into petrified compliance by lunatic far-Left Marxists who’s ideology killed 10 times more people than Islam by words like ‘far-Right’, and the Globalists WEF crowd of billionaire megalomaniacs that use ‘woke Marxist’ tactics to gain mass compliance.
Our people are being killed due to fear of ords employed as loaded perjoratives for the sole purpose of controlling and ensuring compliance from weak people too devoid of intestinal fortitude to stand up to evil bullying fanatics.
A two year old killed and two other boys attacked plus another man. A car plowed into a Christmas market. The rape crisis. Plus all the rest. Ugh. And the powers that be are so fearful of breaking with woke ideology/their paymasters they can’t even stomach decisive measures to control borders sensibly?
Plus, most of them are held hostage by their careers and are beholden to the billionaire elite class. A class for which the EU serves as an expanded marketplace they can expand their operation in and sell to more people, and which low-wage migration is vital. And who the whole European polity are in sway to, directly against the desires of the majority.
Are the AFD actually far-Right, or just the Leftist version of it, which is anyone focussed on tackling the border crises who realizes the madness or open borders?
The downside of rule by committee when real change is needed.
Another interesting article from Wolfgang. He’s a great addition to Unherd.
“For the EU, this would be worse than Brexit; it would mark the first step towards the disintegration of the entire EU project.”
Utter codswallop.
Multiculturalism is a siren song luring our society to its ruin on the rocks of tolerance and self-hatred. The AfD understands this. Good on them.
“If as a German voter, you wanted change in
economic policy,IMMIGRATION POLICY there is currently no path for such a preference to be implemented. No matter how you vote, you always end up with the same homogenised centrist policies”There I fixed it for him. The lack of self-awareness is astounding
I am pleased you have called this German firewall system a ‘political cartel’. That’s exactly what it is. It is fundamentally anti-democratic and excludes a growing number of German citizens from formal politics. I don’t know if the ‘firewall’ has any basis in German law, but if I were a German voter, I would sue the centrist parties of depriving anyone beyond their narrow centrist agenda from having a say in how the country is run. Mrs Simpson
Note to Wolfgang. AfD is not “far right” stop using the governing fascist’s talking points.
Hard to imagine who is “far right” if the AfD isn’t (although interestingly, Wikipedia says it started out as a party of the conventional centre-right).
The AfD is making perfectly reasonable demands. The ruling idiots are nihilistic fools.
One so called political reasoning for “democratic firewalls” is to curtail the free exchange of ideas within the context of unsustainable population growth, considering that unsustainable population growth is a State – Corporate decision to encourage low wage immigration for profit accumulation and to encourage more tax revenues to pay for gold plated public sector pensions.
This curtailment of the free exchange of ideas has created the monoculture of DEI whereby any ideas that challenge this monolithic monoculture are smeared with ad hominem attacks. This debases our intellect and rationality.
This debasement is the basis of reductive reactionary thinking, such as what we witness with the likes of protests that glorify the violence of Hamas or protests that glorify the public disorder associated with radical environmentalism.
In other words, the debasement of the intellect and rationality results in the inability to think holistically and responsively to the world around us.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/transcendent-thinking-boosts-teen-brains-in-ways-that-enhance-life/
And then we wonder why modern liberal multicultural democracies are riven with division and conflict alongside a growing disenchantment of democracy by younger generations.
If this continues, we will soon enough see another Hitler enter the mainstream stage. The question is, which grouping will be seen as public enemy number one.
Germany could be precisely the European powerhouse to reverse immigration ideology that has riddled the world of liberal politics for 3 decades now.