German election result puts Europe in a deeper mess

France’s Emmanuel Macron with Germany’s Angela Merkel: Picture: AFP

What a spectacular mess German politics is right now.

And what a mess this German election result is likely to make of the EU — the only saving grace being that the EU’s ­inherent messiness and dysfunction are so great that it’s hard to see the German electoral stalemate doing much more than confirming this.

The first result is that the grand federalist plans of France’s Emmanuel Macron seem to have been dealt a heavy blow. Macron, like the odious Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission (and one of the most effective if unintended campaigners for Brexit), wants to transform the EU explicitly into a superstate.

Macron’s vision is that this superstate will be dominated by the president of France — himself — and the chancellor of Germany. Juncker’s vision is that it will be dominated by the gnomes of Brussels.

Both men want to take sovereign power away from the nations of Europe and pool it in a transnational EU.

Generally, European voters hate this idea.

Macron wants a European ­finance minister and a permanent European budget to bail out ­perennial or repeat European ­basket-case economies. He also wants a European defence force, a Euro­pean asylum-seeker tsar and so on. The German election makes this dark fantasy a bit more unlikely.

But first give Macron his due. At least he understands that the EU as currently constituted doesn’t work. There are two ­coherent responses. Either reduce the overweening power and para­lysis-inducing qualities of the EU ­and reconstruct the bloc as a close association of independent nations. Or go the whole hog and create an EU superstate, thereby removing effective democracy, ­accountability and much liberty among member nations.

The Germans, who naturally dominate the European economy, have nonetheless never been fond of Macron’s plans. They will go along with quite a lot of EU superstate stuff when they can retain the power. But if an EU superstate means someone else gets to dole out their money in bailouts, they lose enthusiasm rapidly.

The German self-conception is of a steady, sober, thrifty, hard-working people who have achieved enormous success while their more fun-loving southern European neighbours are at the beach or having a siesta. There is a deal of truth in this self-conception although it underplays the role the euro plays in Germany’s success. The euro cripples southern Europeans by giving them a permanently and structurally over­valued currency while it massively benefits German exporters by giving them a permanently and structurally undervalued currency.

In any event, the German election strengthens Eurosceptic forces and will likely yield a government allergic to Macron’s ambitions.

The Alternative for Germany (AfD) won 13 per cent of the vote, nearly 100 seats, and came third nationwide. The parties of the EU centre, Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats and her former ­coalition partners the Social Democrats, each recorded their lowest vote ever, between them getting barely more than 50 per cent. Merkel will lead a government but this is a grave decline for Germany’s establishment parties.

The AfD campaigned mainly against uncontrolled Muslim ­immigration from North Africa and the Middle East. But it began life as an anti-bailout party and is firmly Eurosceptic.

One cheering result was the resurrection of the Free Democrats. They are pro-business and for decades were a reliable Christian Democrat coalition partner. Under new leader Christian Lindner, they won more than 10 per cent and have a distinctive new identity. For all intents and purposes, they are Eurosceptics. They don’t like bailouts and are heretics on the utility of southern European nations being yoked to the euro.

They argue the immensely sensible reform — which the Brussels eurocrats despise — of changing EU rules so countries can leave the union coherently and cleanly if they wish to.

Merkel’s only chance of forming a coalition is to get the Free Democrats and the Greens to join her. The Free Democrats and the Greens hate each other and have contradictory policies on everything, so that will be fun. In fact, the Free Democrats have views on asylum-seekers and immigration very similar to those of AfD. They may well have doubled their vote ­partly because they were the most anti-immigration of the respectable parties.

It is unlikely the Free Democrats will agree to become part of a coalition that moves towards a superstate and further loss of sovereignty. That the EU eurocrats still push this shows their determination never to listen to voters.

It is also the case that across Western politics the rewards for minor parties that enter into coalitions with much bigger parties are extremely equivocal. The Social Democrats entered a grand ­coalition with Merkel’s Christian Democrats after the last election and suffered a huge swing against them this time.

Such was the fate of the Liberal Democrats in coalition with the Conservatives in Britain. The Free Democrats lost all their seats in the German parliament after their past coalition experience with the Christian Democrats. Even the Greens suffered electoral reversal in Australia after their de facto ­coalition with Julia Gillard. Israel repeatedly spawns bold centrist parties, with good economic and social ideas. They garner a sizeable vote, go into coalition with a bigger mainstream party and are wiped out at the subsequent election.

The minor party in such an ­arrangement can never imple­ment the program that won it votes. Unless it scores enormous, specific wins for its constituency, which is difficult if its appeal has been broad, coalition government tends to result in an electoral drubbing. The Free Democrats will be acutely aware of this.

Similarly, the German election reconfirms the continued rise of populism in Europe. Despite Macron’s victory, the National Front got its highest vote ever in the last French election. Geert Wilders came close to doing the same in the Dutch election. And now we have AfD in Germany.

One of the weird things in the German results is that nearly a quarter of voters chose parties ­regarded by the German mainstream as extremists who must be kept out of government at all costs. The far left Die Linke, a rebranded version of the gruesome East German Stalinists of the communist era, also won 10 per cent. Add that to AfD and the German political class suddenly defines ­itself as banishing to pariah status nearly a quarter of its electorate.

It is reasonable to call AfD far right; it would be wrong to call it fascist or neo-Nazi. Some of its spokesmen have said foolish and offensive things, especially about World War II. They have not, however, attempted to justify any aspect of Nazism.

The moral narrative of the ­Europolitical establishment is that all these parties are ruled out of ­decent conversation all the time. A better democratic strategy might well be to try to bring them more into the mainstream, provided they do not actually advocate ­unconscionable policies. Certainly opposing uncontrolled immigration from North Africa and the Middle East is not remotely ­unconscionable.

The European establishment has forced debate on uncontrolled immigration to the extremes of politics. This is partly because any nation trying to regain normal control of its borders is not only opposing the left-liberal zeitgeist of the European chattering classes but opposing the transnational controls of the EU.

The final big consequence of the German election is that it ­almost certainly makes Brexit ­negotiations more difficult. The EU is incoherent and vindictive about these negotiations at the best of times. Without an effective German government — and it may take weeks or months to form one — the negotiations probably go into limbo.

This will suit ruthless EU ­bureaucrats. They are delighted that Theresa May’s government is so weakened by the election. British Labour under Jeremy Corbyn has just reversed itself to now favour trying to stay in the EU free market and customs union. To do that while formally leaving the EU would give Britain the absolute worst of all worlds. It would continue to be ruled by the EU but have no influence on it at all.

The more Brexit is a mess, the more it hurts Britain, the more this helps the crude power equations of the Brussels bureaucrats because this discourages other nations from contemplating an exit.

The mess of European politics continues. No outcome in any ­nation, or across Europe, is guaranteed. Everyone has everything to play for.