Merkel’s exit leaves Germany’s far-right AfD struggling for a hate figure
- ‘Merkel must go’ is the main slogan of the Alternative for Germany party. The trouble is, now she is going, what’s the point in voting for it?
The troubles have come thick and fast since the five-year-old Alternative for Germany reached a key goal in October by entering the last of the country’s 16 state assemblies, winning 13 per cent in the region of Hesse.
A relative newcomer feared and loathed by the bigger mainstream parties, the AfD has however now stagnated at around 15 per cent in the polls while another party, the left-leaning Greens, has booked a series of stunning successes.
Billing themselves as “the alternative to the Alternative” with a clear stance against the AfD’s anti-immigration message, the Greens are now polling at around 20 per cent, making them the second-strongest party after Merkel’s CDU-CSU bloc.
The AfD meanwhile have faced charges of accepting illegal campaign funds from a non-EU donor, in Switzerland – an especially damaging charge for a party that accuses all the “establishment parties” of being dishonest and corrupt.