For the past year, as the hurricane of political populism shook the west, Germany remained an island of calm. The US elected Donald Trump; Britain plunged towards Brexit; François Hollande was too unpopular even to stand for re-election as France’s president. By contrast, Angela Merkel, moved serenely towards a fourth term as German chancellor. Among the large western nations, only Germany seemed to have strong and stable leadership.
This weekend’s elections ensure that Ms Merkel has indeed secured another term in office. But the other, less comforting, development is that Germany has lost its immunity to angry, anti-establishment populism. That has serious implications for the German chancellor’s ability to play the role of “leader of the western world”, a title that many bestowed on her after the election of Mr Trump.
The big story of the German election is clearly the rise of the nationalist right, in the form of Alternative for Germany, which scored over 13 per cent of the vote and will be the third-largest bloc in parliament with more than 90 MPs. Sigmar Gabriel, Germany’s foreign minister, has argued that with the AfD in parliament “we will have real Nazis in the German Reichstag for the first time since the end of the second world war”. Most analysts do not go that far. But other far-right politicians in Europe certainly regard the AfD as a sister party. Marine Le Pen, leader of France’s National Front, was quick to congratulate the German party on its electoral success.