What Denmark’s social democrats could teach Germany’s SPD

Despite suffering their worst electoral humiliation since the 1890s, Germany’s Social Democrat party (SPD) is displaying a remarkable combination of arrogance and delusion. Having collapsed to a mere 16 per cent in last month’s election, the party has nonetheless strong-armed Friedrich Merz’s victorious CDU into abandoning fiscal discipline and embracing ruinous debt policies.

This audacious blackmail would be impressive if it weren’t so dangerous for Germany’s economic future. Yet amidst this parliamentary chess game, the SPD remains stubbornly blind to the fundamental reason for their historic decline: they refuse to acknowledge that their traditional voter base, the German working class, has decamped completely to the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) over one issue: immigration.

The pattern is as predictable as it is devastating. Across Western Europe, traditional left-wing parties have watched in horror as their core constituencies – blue-collar workers, the economically vulnerable, and those in post-industrial regions – have flocked to populist right-wing parties.