The Centre's Last Chance? Lessons from the 2025 German Election

The inflation and cost of living crises that COVID-19 let rip was further entrenched by Russia’s horrific invasion of Ukraine and almost everywhere governments failed to convince voters that they had solutions to the problems they faced. For all of Scholz’s pre-election talk of reinventing government to solve the problems that we all collectively face, millions of voters thought instead that they witnessed a government paralyzed by permanent infighting and the continual misfunctioning of the state machine. For all of the talk of “respecting” working people once again, instead the gnawing sense that the political elite live within their own bubble protected from the tribulations that befall ordinary people returned with a vengeance. This was the backdrop both to the Social Democrats rapid electoral decline and to the rise of the extremes, most notably on the right but also on the left. The results were not as decisive as they might have been, although the SPD has suffered the worst electoral defeat in its more than one and half centuries’ history. They were certainly an indication that patience is rapidly running out. For the centre to continue to hold, radical promises have to be delivered on, however difficult that is to do, either politically or economically. If they are not, then the old assumptions about the power of the centre ground in European politics will look very flimsy indeed.