Germany swung dramatically to the Right in yesterday’s general election, with the Christian Democrats (CDU) – still mainstream centre-Right but now more conservative than they were in Angela Merkel’s day – coming first with just under 29 per cent of the vote (according to exit polls and early results).

The radical-Right insurgents, Alternative for Germany (AfD), doubled their share of the vote to come a clear second with over 20 per cent.

The ruling Social Democrats (the SPD, Germany’s equivalent of our Labour Party) at the head of a rudderless centre-Left coalition for four years – and in power for 23 of the past 27 years – have been ignominiously turfed out, winning only 16 per cent of the vote, down ten percentage points and their worst result since the federal republic emerged from the ashes of the Second World War.

Their Green coalition partners fared even worse with a 13.5 per cent share of the vote.

It was touted as the most significant and consequential general election for years, not just for Germany but for Europe. 

On the surface it looks as if it lived up to its billing. In a massive 84 per cent turnout, half of Germans voted for the two main parties of the Right, one of which is on the hard-Right. But scratch that surface and it’s not clear how much will really change.

The outgoing coalition, led by the SPD’s mediocre Olaf Scholz, was fractious and directionless. As a result there was paralysis in Berlin and drift in Brussels.

The German economy is in a dire state. It has declined for two years in a row, with industrial production 15 per cent below pre-pandemic levels, its totemic car manufacturers in crisis. 

The AfD – Alternative For Deutschland – led by Alice Weidel (pictured), doubled its election showing from 2021 with an impressive 20 per cent – the strongest showing for a hard-Right party since the Second World War

CDU leader Friedrich Merz, who will be the next Chancellor (replacing Olaf Scholz), ‘won’ only in the sense that he and his Bavarian allies (the Christian Social Union) got the biggest share of the vote

There is also a crying need for the European Union to show some grit and leadership at a time when the Pax Americana, which has safeguarded Europe’s security for generations, is being dismantled by Donald Trump. That can only happen with a strong Germany.

So the need for radical change is obvious. But the CDU leader Friedrich Merz, who will be the next Chancellor (an improvement on Scholz but he won’t set the heather on fire), ‘won’ only in the sense that he and his Bavarian allies (the Christian Social Union) got the biggest share of the vote. 

But nowhere near enough to form a working majority in the Bundestag, Germany’s House of Commons.

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For that he will need to build his own coalition. The arithmetic points to a deal with the other main party of the Right, the AfD.

But it is regarded as beyond the pale by all Germany’s mainstream parties. So Merz will have to seek another partner – most likely the Social Democrats, minus Scholz, who will be quickly junked. Last night early projections gave a CDU/CSU-SPD coalition a slim majority in the 630-strong Bundestag. But it was shrinking as the night went on. 

So the party which has just crashed and burned in yesterday’s election and which in most other democracies would be consigned to the political wilderness to lick its wounds could still find itself in power when a new coalition emerges. Not good. Trump and Putin will be delighted. 

The process will take weeks – probably months – leaving a vacuum in Europe’s most important country during a continent-wide crisis.

It is a curious quirk – it might better be described as a systemic fault – of Germany’s proportional representation voting system, much loved by Britain’s chattering classes, that you can vote for change yet nothing much changes.

PR might work when you’re presiding over success and all you need to do is tinker. But not when you need tough decisions to reverse decline.

Merz campaigned on tax cuts to pep up the sclerotic German economy, a more determined effort to rebuild the country’s hollowed out military, more enthusiastic support for Ukraine and an energy policy a little less loonily green.

Friedrich Merz (centre, holding microphone) celebrates with his party, but will have to form a coalition

In truth, it was a modest, unambitious platform for power. Yet he will now have to water it down further to bring the Social Democrats on board.

Meanwhile, the AfD will bide its time. It will become the de facto opposition in the Bundestag with around 150 seats. If the new coalition turns out to be as uninspiring as the outgoing one, the AfD’s chance of power may yet come, this election a staging post to it.

The Germans voted for change because they wanted to reverse the country’s economic decline, get a grip on its borders after too much uncontrolled immigration, re-arm to deal with a revanchist Russia to its east and end the Green energy obsession which has resulted in soaring household fuel bills and decimated its once world-famous heavy industry.

Merz, who at 69 has never held ministerial office, is unlikely to be in a position to implement the radical reforms required to do any of that. Nor has he ever shown much interest in the EU, so that’s unlikely to get the leadership needed either.

But Merz knows the world is changing. He’s even mooted, as America’s attention switches to the Pacific, Germany coming under the protection of Britain’s nuclear umbrella. We shouldn’t rule it out. But we might like to insist that the EU’s vindictive post-Brexit punishment beatings come to an end first.