Merkel pays the price

FOR years, this paper warned that the European liberal elite’s contempt for public disquiet over mass immigration would lead to a resurgence of fanatical parties of the Right and Left.

But mainstream politicians thought they knew better. Apart from a handful who echoed our concerns, they dismissed us as ‘populists’ or, worse, as racists.

Today, it gives us no pleasure to see our warnings coming true. All over the continent – in hungary, Greece, Poland and spain – parties from both extremes of the political spectrum are on the march.

Now, most chilling of all, the far Right is making a comeback in mighty Germany, where the xenophobic AfD seized more than 90 seats in this weekend’s elections.

Thus, it has become the first substantial Right-wing party in the Bundestag since the Nazis. it is all too easy to explain the party’s success.

German voters have become frustrated beyond endurance by the ‘we know best’ attitude of the political class, which seems deaf to their concerns about the impact of unrestricted immigration on their national identity, job security and public services.

The last straw came in 2015 when Angela Merkel threw open Germany’s borders to more than a million asylum seekers, with the full encouragement of the EU.

To her credit, the German Chancellor has admitted she was wrong to ignore public opinion. is it too much to hope that she will deliver the same message to Brussels?