Mirroring the far right on immigration backfired for Germany’s political centre | Johannes Hillje

Even the Greens hardened their rhetoric and lost votes as a result. The message is clear: the new government must offer hope, not hatred

Germany’s next government will be a coalition of the political centre led by the conservative Friedrich Merz. That may sound like stability. Traditionally, a government made up of the two big centrist parties, the Social Democrats (SPD) and Merz’s Christian Democrats (CDU), has been called the grand coalition. But it is no longer grand and offers only an illusion of stability.

The SPD achieved its worst result in a national election since the second world war, with 16.4% of the vote. The CDU scored its second-worst result, with 28.5%. If you include the Greens and the Liberals, the parties that occupy the political ground from centre-left to centre-right won just over 60% of the votes cast.

Johannes Hillje is a Berlin-based political consultant and a fellow at Das Progressive Zentrum, an independent thinktank

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