That the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) is now the principal opposition party in the most powerful country of the European Union has produced remarkably little reaction in Britain. In September of last year the then German foreign minister and vice chancellor, Sigmar Gabriel, told Der Spiegel that if AfD made it into the Bundestag, Nazis would speak in the Reichstag for the first time in more than 70 years. The German political system was constructed after the end of the Second World War to make any such recurrence impossible. It has now happened, and yet liberals in this and other countries seem largely unmoved. Last year Angela Merkel was being celebrated as the leader of the Western world, and the dull stability over which she presided lauded as a model that Britain would do well to emulate. More than any other European country, we were assured, Germany had rid itself of the ugly nationalism that had disfigured the continent in the past.
