Germany sends a new shockwave

When the British announced their withdrawal from the European Union last summer, at least a few commentators expressed the fear that this decision would have some unpredictable and possibly harmful effects elsewhere in the EU. That seemed exaggerated, but recent events suggest that the U.K.’s plans have resonated throughout the other two large states, Germany and France. And it seems likely that the EU itself is subject to change.

The most disturbing European event since Brexit is this week’s federal election in Germany. The results were a shock to Chancellor Angela Merkel, who had been expected to win her fourth term with ease, extending into the future her already 12 years as leader of the country. Her coalition was delivering results that should have made voters happy, even grateful — high employment, booming exports, a growth rate better than the U.S., Japan or Canada — and clear leadership in the EU, the result of Merkel’s calm, wise talent for manoeuvre. Polls duly showed her in a double-digit lead.

But her votes fell calamitously and to stay in power she was left to assemble a (likely) hard-to-manage new coalition.

An even more striking result was the success of Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). Founded in 2013, the AfD contested the federal election that year and won 4.7 per cent of the votes, missing the 5 per cent required to sit in the Bundestag. This year it leapt ahead, stealing members from just about all the other parties. It attracted 12.6 per cent of the overall national vote, receiving 94 Bundestag seats. A poll showed that it was twice as popular, proportionately, in the former East Germany as in the former West.

The AfD is a right-wing nationalist party that maintains friendly relations with farther-right parties and evokes accusations of covert anti-Semitism. Its leaders spend a lot of their time talking their way out of trouble caused by members with odious ideas. Many AfD members resent Merkel’s generosity to Syrian refugees — they consider it unfair to “the people,” meaning the German people. It sets out to defend the “German way of life.” It also takes a skeptical view of the EU.

Voters in France upended their politics, dismissed their traditional parties and installed as president a newcomer, Emmanuel Macron. On Tuesday, in a speech at the Sorbonne, he said the EU must change. It is, he says, too weak, too slow, too inefficient. In the postBrexit period, he’s campaigning for a “profound transformation.”

Meanwhile, back home in the land of Brexit, leaving the EU is turning out to be harder than anyone imagined.

In the referendum in June last year, 51.9 per cent of the electorate voted to leave the EU.

While that percentage sometimes elects a president or a garbage collector, it seems rather sparse in a referendum. We can hardly say it represents “the voice of the people,” when almost the same number of the people voted against it.

Nevertheless, Prime Minister Theresa May, who had been (in a quiet way) in favour of remaining in the EU, took the 51.9 as an absolute order from the public to get out quickly. She immediately charged ahead, and in her blithe way she’s still assuming she can produce a deal that will satisfy both the Leavers (such as Boris Johnson, her foreign affairs secretary) and the Remainers (such as her Chancellor of the Exchequer, Philip Hammond). She has also made it clear that she can work out an arrangement that the EU will endorse. That idea has been greeted by the EU negotiators with an icy silence.

May called an election last summer, hoping that a good majority would help her unify the Conservative party behind her Brexit program. The results were a disappointment. The Labour Party, on the other hand, did so well under its formerly unpopular leader, Jeremy Corbyn, that it believes it has a future.

Labour’s mood has so improved that it’s announced (talk about terrorist threats!) that if it wins the next election it will renationalize water, energy and rail companies and everything else in sight. The British have suffered for Brexit, but there is more suffering still to come.