AfD surge in Germany's elections has lesson for UK politics

Germany’s far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) has surged ahead in the country’s 2025 election, becoming its second-biggest party. A key lesson Britain must take away from this is to listen carefully to voters whom establishment politicians have long ignored or taken for granted. Because it’s precisely the lack of trust in out-of-touch political elites that has fuelled the resurgence of the far right.

At the same time, there’s also some hope for people who are worrying about the surge of the far right both at home and abroad.

AfD: mobilising disenfranchised voters, in the wrong direction

The AfD has powerful corporate backers because of their commitment to trashing regulations. That also means they have money for a strong social-media game, which has likely helped to attract non-voters. The AfD got by far the biggest boost from these people, as seems to be the case with the corporate elitists of Reform UK.

AfD got 2 million non-voters to vote for them

Reform are topping the polls here because they are doing the same pic.twitter.com/580OW0oEDn

— Taj Ali (@Taj_Ali1) February 24, 2025

Money and living standards are the key issue in most elections, whether pundits and parties focus on them or not. And Germany’s outgoing centrist government offered voters little on those fronts. In fact, they differed little from their right-wing predecessors, offering no meaningful action to combat “rising energy prices and economic stagnation brought on by the war in Ukraine“. Voters punished all the coalition members as a result.

“Persistent inequality“ in Germany, particularly between the wealthier west and poorer east, is one reason why the AfD is strongest in the east. It understands the disenchantment of people with few resources and little power, and one expert says it has successfully turned itself into “an aircraft carrier for resentment and anger“.

The corporate agenda of the economically and socially extreme party wouldn’t solve Germany’s serious economic woes or help the people worst affected by them, though. It has just opportunistically ridden on the wave of anti-establishment sentiment to divert people’s attention (and most political parties’ attention) towards the issue of migration instead of economics.

It’s possible to mobilise disenfranchised voters in the right direction

The centrist coalition parties lost big, and the leading Social Democrats (SPD) in particular. Fellow establishment party the Christian Democratic Union, which won the most votes and has an even worse corporate agenda, is now considering a coalition with the SPD. Both parties have primarily older voters in the west of Germany. The German Greens, meanwhile, are more conservative than other green parties in the world and do well mostly in more affluent and urban areas.

Apart from the AfD’s surge, there was also a surge on the left.

It’s clear that parties willing to go against both the economic and warmongering status quo of establishment parties benefitted. Because Die Linke (the Left Party) worked hard to improve its result not just in urban areas but also in East Germany. And it managed to get some 290,000 non-voters on board.

Likewise, the socially conservative but economically social-democratic Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) – a new party – attracted 400,000 non-voters and narrowly missed the 5% threshold to enter the Bundestag.

Both the Left and the BSW have their issues, but their surge shows that there is hunger for a left-wing challenge to the economic and warmongering establishment, if the left can step its game up.

Featured image via the Canary