March 13, 2025 - 3:00pm
“The Left is gone,” declared Friedrich Merz just before the German election. Confident of victory for his centre-right CDU/CSU, the likely next chancellor predicted: “There will be no Left-wing majority and no more Left-wing politics in Germany.”
Most Germans did indeed vote for Right-wing parties, but Left-wing politics isn’t going anywhere. In fact, the Left-wing minority might derail the new government’s flagship policy before it even takes office.
In an effort to boost European defence capabilities and pull the German economy out of its downward spiral, the two parties most likely to form the new government want to spend big. They intend to borrow up to €1 trillion to get the German military fighting fit and to invest in the country’s crumbling infrastructure, and it will be debated in the German parliament today. But the Greens, whose support would be required to reach the necessary supermajority for such eye-watering borrowing, have vowed to block the spending package.
Germany is in a self-imposed fix. The parties of the deeply unpopular ruling coalition led by chancellor Olaf Scholz’s centre-left SPD alongside the Greens get to call the shots in the next government, despite having lost the election.
Merz needs Green help because, under Germany’s previous chancellor Angela Merkel, a so-called debt brake was written into the constitution that severely restricts borrowing. Any changes to it and any special budgets to run outside of regular expenditure must be approved by a two-thirds majority — and for that Merz will have to turn to the forces he’d declared dead merely weeks ago.
This dynamic is self-imposed, too. All political parties uphold a firewall against the anti-immigration Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), which came second with nearly 21% of the vote. That leaves the centre-right election winner with only parties to the Left to work with.
Even a regular majority is only possible with the most spectacular loser of the election: the SPD, which received its worst result since the 1800s. Being Merz’s only viable coalition partner has put the party in a position to strong-arm him in exchange for compromises on illegal immigration. Some of its politicians have even demanded that deportations are only used as a last resort, and that long-term residents in Germany get a vote regardless of whether they are citizens. The spending package itself looks more like SPD policy than Merz’s – he had promised fiscal prudence before the election.
The Greens have been ridiculed by Merz relentlessly, with the CDU leader at one point ranting against “Green and Leftist nutjobs”. Now they have little reason to wave through his reforms, arguing that the new government doesn’t “care about the future, climate protection and generational fairness”. Merz is under enormous pressure, then, to find out what they want and give it to them before the new parliament convenes on 25 March.
In the new Bundestag, the AfD will double its share of representatives, and the far-Left Die Linke will also get 10% of seats. Together, they will have over a third of deputies and therefore the opportunity to block supermajorities like the one Merz seeks. He would then have to convince the stridently anti-military Die Linke, as well as the SPD and the Greens, of his plans.
Merz was right: there is no majority for Left-wing politics in Germany. Just over a third of voters opted for the SPD, Greens and Die Linke combined. But with the firewall against the Right firmly in place, the conservatives will shift to the Left in exchange for power, repeating the cardinal error of the Merkel era rather than correcting it as they had promised voters.
Many Germans will feel that no matter how much they vote for change, every one of their governments looks like the last: divided, with an inbuilt centre-left drift that has long ceased to represent the will of the majority.
Katja Hoyer is a German-British historian and writer. She is the author, most recently, of Beyond the Wall: East Germany, 1949-1990.
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Telling it as it is isn’t being a bull in a china shop…except to those who “can’t handle the truth”.
Love it or loathe it the USA has babied Europe along for years. Yes it got benefits…but nowhere near what the babies got.
Time for them to grow up…if they can.
of course support for far left parties is actually higher in the US than in Europe, where they got 33% in Germany, but nearly 50% in the US.Pretty simlar across most of Europe
Woke, DEI,Trans activism all came from the US, the US in fact has enjoyed more support historically for Communism than most european countries, you could count the amount of Communists in the UK on 1 hand, they usually having a sip of their 1 pint for the night.
if we where to say which country has problem in the western world with support for the Left, (face it even the moderate left is extreme, or has to bend to the extreme) it’s the US
the US is far more diverse, far further down that immigration , demographic issue, but Americans always go on about Europe, europe in that respect is like the US was in the 1970’s
the US has no real identity , hence the flags outside every house, in Europe our heritage is our ethnicity , history, traditions
As we see the pushback against this started in the UK with Brexit, TERF Island, in Germany with the ADF, in NL with Wilders, Italy , Meloni
So i would argue the US is generally far more left than most of Europe
I don’t think the term “Left” means the same thing in the US as it does in Europe.
the other thing to add is Trump, and i like Trump, i support him, but while he rightfully concentrates on illegal immigration, has made little to no mention of Legal Immigration , in fact Musk is pro more of it.
Legal Immigration is the thing none of the parties in any country wishes to talk about, why because it’s far worse than Illegal immigration, it’s usually higher by a large factor and Illegal migration is used to divert attention away from it
It all boils down to culture and yes the US was a melting pot, mostly from European, Christian heritage , as that changes, so will US culture, so will rights, laws change as well
Your legal immigrants are not coming from Europe anymore, they are coming from the Middle East, N Africa, Sub Saharan Africa
Germany may be better off than the U.S.? Two thirds of the country voted against progressive policies like net zero and open borders, yet they will get another heaping dose of those same policies. Of course, Merz could make this all go away by aligning with the AfD, but it’s verboten to link up with the fasc!st party led by a lesbian, married to an immigrant woman of colour. Those lesbian Naz!s are just the worst.
Like the rest of western Europe, industry is leaving Germany drip by bloody drip, and being replaced by nothing, because energy costs there are five times higher than its competitors.
Those lesbian Naz!s are just the worst.
Ain’t that just the truth, brother!
Rather than “sobering” it might be an idea to have a few drinks to celebrate the escape of the US from the clutches of stasis. Nothing changes without chaos; learn to embrace it.
For God sakes man. Are you now Trump- Lensing everything? Everything in the world has to be seen through a Trump Conscious Lens.
Katya Hoyer is my favorite commentator on European, in particular German, politics. I’d be interested in an article giving her assessment of how Germany can escape its current political stasis. Or is there no choice but to wait for the country to degenerate into such a dysfunctional mess that a radical leader emerges and begins the hard work of reforming Germany so it can better face the emerging world order?
Incredible to recall that as recently as the start of the new millennium Germany was a global industrial leader and an example of how to run an efficient, prosperous country.
Germany’s problem is like the Gordon knot. Metz simply needs to cut the knot and work with the AfD in implementing the policies the electorate want instead of trying to compromise away these policies by bending the knee to the major losing parties. If he is sensible he will be happy to show how arrogant and obdurate the SPD and Greens are so that he can claim he has no choice but to work with the AfD. What sort of Right-Wing party is co-lead by a lesbian married to a foreigner with a pretty un-Caucasian ethnicity. Adolf would not be convinced AfD were his heirs. Why should anyone else be?
Serves Merz right. By refusing to work with AFD this is the outcome he’s created and he should own it.
That’s the trouble with proportional representation in a divided political environment. It gives disproportionate role / power / influence to parties that have a small following and whose philosophy is incompatible with the biggest party.
Like capitalism, democracy is a terrible system, but the others are even worse.
And there are people in the UK look at outcomes like this and still want PR .
Yes FPTP is flawed but, like Representative Democracy, it’s much better than all the alternatives.
Why is FPTP better? In 2015 UKIP won 12% of the vote and received 1 MP out of 650.
PR isn’t perfect, but the Germans are making hard work of it by refusing to work with the AfD. In NZ it works fine. At least the parties in power have received a majority of votes between them, something that I doubt has happened in Britain since universal suffrage
Works fine in NZ. No way. It enabled the Adern Government which supercharged the fracturing of society by pandering to the ever increasing and totally untenable demands of a small proportion of NZ, namely those claiming indigenous rights, most of whom have only modest indigenous blood in their veins.
Ardern won (just) over 50% of the vote in 2020. Are you suggesting she shouldn’t have been PM?
Under FPP Ardern’s majority would have been massive in 2020.
FPTP is better because after almost all elections, there is a clear winner.
A clear winner that 2/3 of the electorate didn’t vote for though
As all the ‘respectable’ politicians build formal defences against the resurgence of the Natsocs, they are blind to the fact that they are simply creating a political Maginot line. The increasing resentment of the people will undermine, dissolve and flood around whatever wall they construct. Who knows what political forces their rigid strategies will bring into play?
The longer it goes on the more support will drift across to the AfD as those centre right voters will get sick of seeing their vote putting the left into power.
The sensible thing would be to go in a coalition with the AfD and actually give them responsibility to fix the problems they campaign on such as immigration. If they’re successful the right bloc gets a boost, if it turns out they’re all mouth no trousers (as I expect to be honest) then support will drift back to the centre right
Aren’t the AfD pro-Putin? Will they support an increase in military spending?
Good point, honest a see is I’ve no idea. Put them in power and make them justify their choices rather than carp on the sidelines
They aren’t pro-Putin, they’re anti-war.
David Eades
This short term political shortsightedness is horrific. A mixture of blind ideology and craven short term power hunger. Cannot the politicians of the centre see that if they do not deliver the policies the electorate wants they are enfranchising ever more right wing policies in the future and that future is nearer than the think.
It is at times like this that I am thankful that Britain has not embraced proportional representation.
Die Brandmauer is stupid and undemocratic. The sooner Germany’s established political parties grow up and work with the will of the German people, the better.
I lived in Germany for a number of years and non-German residents just like all non-citizen residents living anywhere do not deserve a vote. Their country of citizenship should permit them to vote, this is enough. Besides, most left wing parties only believe this because they think that there will be more votes for them. Otherwise they would not support it. Also undemocratic.
Arguably the exclusion of the so called extreme rights parties is not working well in Europe, which is one of the ideas
I draw from your article. In France Le Pen is similarly excluded. Wouldn’t it be more effective, not to say democratic, to make it possible for extremist parties to vote for pieces of legislation they like without the political and journalistic extablishment throwing itself into a tizzy.
Happening in Austria with FPO, which actually won the last election with the largest share of the vote, but which has been frozen out of the ruling coalition.
When will Europe decide that the tidal wave of Muslim scum is destroying European civilization?
It‘s not surprising to read racist bigotry from readers like Paul Thompson.
> and that long-term residents in Germany get a vote regardless of whether they are citizens.
Now we get to the real heart of the matter and why the crazy leftist nutters oppose immigration reform. They want those illegal votes.
Well done, Katja Hoyer, very good analysis, and also congratulations on dropping far- or extreme -right for AfD, and recognising them for what they are, anti-immigration.
David Eades