GERMANY - ‘To the victor, the spoils’ – or will they be ‘firewalled’ again? We have long been reporting here on TGP on the fact that the establishment forces in Europe, now that they are being outvoted by the right-wing parties, have to rely on the ‘firewall’ strategies to keep the victors from governing. In the Parliamentary system, if a party is the most voted, but does not have over 50% of the vote, they need to form a coalition with secondary forces to govern.

GERMANY - Rebels in German chancellor’s party consider switching support after ‘catastrophic’ Saxony-Anhalt election. The AfD has been trapped by a firewall policy in which Germany’s centrist parties refuse to co-operate with it at the state or federal level. But after a sweeping election victory on Sunday night, cracks are starting to appear. Rebels in the German chancellor’s party want to lend their support to the hard-Right AfD, The Telegraph understands.

GERMANY - A key ally of Friedrich Merz has ignited a major political debate by suggesting the chancellor’s centrist conservatives should break a taboo and cooperate with the country’s most popular party: the far-right Alternative for Germany. Michael Kretschmer, premier of the eastern state of Saxony and a member of the chancellor’s center-right Christian Democratic Union, is challenging Merz’s insistence on keeping the country’s firewall against the surging AfD ahead of crucial elections in September that could put the far-right party in charge of a region for the first time. “Anyone who still talks about firewalls hasn’t recognized the signs of the times,” Kretschmer, who leads a minority government in Saxony, told the Handelsblatt newspaper in an interview earlier this week. “We need to talk to anyone who wants to talk.”

GERMANY - Friedrich Merz, the German chancellor, refused to resign on Monday despite suffering a catastrophic defeat by the hard-Right AfD in a key regional election. The Christian Democrats (CDU) leader said he was “deeply unsettled” by Alternative for Germany’s triumph after it won an unprecedented 43.8 per cent of the vote in Saxony-Anhalt. The AfD’s faction in Saxony-Anhalt, led by Ulrich Siegmund, fell just short of the majority needed to form a government but the group said it was open to coalition talks. Mr Merz pledged to fight on as chancellor in a bullish speech addressing the bruising result, in which he also accused Russia of helping the AfD clinch victory. “I’m deeply unsettled. This is the hardest defeat that the CDU has had for decades. Of course, this is going to have consequences,” Mr Merz said. “This is a result where we cannot go back to business as usual.”

UK - Three separate but related events have combined to present our politicians with, at worst, an insoluble problem or, at best, a waking nightmare. First there were the organised protests by masked men at Portsmouth, angry at the latest arrivals of small boats containing illegal immigrants from France. Then there were today’s revelations by a civil service whistleblower in The Times that just 1 per cent of asylum claims in the UK are genuine – a figure that will surprise few and which will seem like an overestimate to some of us. And lastly, and perhaps most significantly, the impressive electoral performance of the hard-Right Alliance for Germany (AfD) in regional elections in eastern Germany over the weekend. It is this last event that is in danger of alerting our own political leaders to the links between all three of these developments.

GERMANY - Thomas de Maizière, a veteran politician from the Christian Democrats, has been involved in east German politics ever since reunification in 1990, serving as Angela Merkel’s chief of staff and later as her interior minister during the 2015 migration crisis. He has wrestled with the Alternative for Germany (AfD) from its very beginnings in 2013, including rearguard action to fend off the party in the Saxon town of Meissen, the constituency he represented for 12 years.

GERMANY - September could prove decisive for Germany’s political future, with elections in Saxony-Anhalt, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Berlin. A CDU defeat in Saxony-Anhalt had been expected, but the scale is nevertheless notable. Whether Alternative for Germany ultimately secures an absolute majority and can form a government on its own is almost secondary, because the message to Germany’s political establishment could hardly be clearer. The warning light is flashing red.

GERMANY - Leaders of the hard-Right Alternative for Germany party (AfD) said they had “made history” after its largest-ever election victory. Final results in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt showed the party won with 43.8 per cent of the vote, with the Christian Democrats (CDU), led by Friedrich Merz, the German chancellor, trailing on 17.2 per cent. Ulrich Siegmund, the AfD state leader in Saxony-Anhalt, said: “We have achieved exactly what we set out to achieve. We have made history in this country. Things cannot continue like this. We need a fundamental political change in this country.” The party achieved more than double the votes than five years ago, however it has fallen three seats short of an absolute majority, with 29 seats in an 83-seat parliament.

GERMANY - "Seismic", "a socio-political earthquake", "a watershed moment for Germany". This was how political analysts and many media outlets described the stunning victory of the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) party in local elections in Germany on Sunday. Is that an exaggeration? Saxony-Anhalt is one of the smallest of massive Germany's 16 regions. It boasts a mere 1.7 million out of 59 million eligible voters nationwide. How significant can its political sentiments be, especially since the AfD narrowly failed to win an outright majority? The answer: Very significant.

GERMANY - “People are simply fed up. They no longer want to be patronised, but above all they no longer want to be lied to by politicians,” he told The Telegraph in a rare interview while on the campaign trail in Saxony-Anhalt. “People just don’t want that any more. They see that the reality of life speaks a different language than what they see on television and read in the newspaper, and that’s why they are fighting back, side by side with us.” Mr Siegmund may not have won enough votes for a commanding majority, but he is helping transform the AfD from a party of protest to a mainstream opposition.

GERMANY - Germany celebrates its Unity Day next month, but the AfD’s triumph in Saxony-Anhalt has exposed how divided the country is. Thirty-six years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the former communist East remains psychologically, economically and politically another country. But the unprecedented performance by AfD (Alternative for Germany) in this eastern state election could have consequences far beyond its borders. Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s CDU is in a full-blown crisis having been thrashed in the state elections, coming a distant second place.

GERMANY - Tonight Germany stands on the brink of its biggest political crisis since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Not since 1945 has a nationalist party of the hard-Right won power at state level in the Federal Republic. Now the Alternative for Germany (AfD) may be about to take over in Saxony-Anhalt in eastern Germany. While the AfD is predicted to fall just three seats short of an absolute majority, it will be extremely difficult for the other parties, which range from far-Left to centre-Right, to maintain their “firewall” against the nationalists.

UK - A major free speech row erupted last night after it was revealed that more than 60,000 people have been arrested over the past five years for 'communications offences' – some as trivial as viewing disparaging TikTok videos. The astonishing figure has been described as 'Orwellian', and having a 'chilling effect' in stifling opinions online. The statistics – to be published in a hard-hitting report this week – also highlight the chaotic implementation of rules on 'malicious' messaging, with some police forces making 14 times more arrests under the powers than others. The report, by campaign group Big Brother Watch, discloses that at least 62,199 people in the UK have been arrested for such offences over the past half-decade, with 18,510 being charged and 12,292 convicted. The report cites the case of West Midlands Police visiting the home of a vulnerable teenage girl to accuse her over a TikTok post containing a teacher's image with negative comments. They demanded that the girl hand over all her devices and either attend a voluntary interview or face arrest – even though she had not created, shared or commented on the video.

UK - Trump is pulling the rug out from under us on the Falklands. It's time Britain grew up, there is no special relationship. So much for all that glad-handing and smiling at the White House. From threatening us over tariffs to pulling the rug out from under us on the Falkland Islands, we have finally found out what American friendship really adds up to. The truth is, the Americans don't care about us and they won't come to our rescue. It is time Britain finally grew up, ditched the delusion of the 'special relationship', and shook off the American dream once and for all.

EGYPT - Xi Jinping’s state visit to Egypt, which began on September 1, was his first in a decade and coincided with the 70th anniversary of diplomatic relations between the two countries. During his meeting with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Xi called on Middle Eastern states to become masters of their own destiny, resist outside interference, and discuss a new regional security architecture. Beijing and Cairo agreed to deepen cooperation on security and counterterrorism, develop projects with data centers, semiconductors, and critical minerals, and expand the use of national currencies in bilateral trade. The relationship is moving beyond conventional trade and infrastructure into sectors that will shape economic sovereignty for decades. The agenda fell within China’s familiar formula – development, state sovereignty, and fairer global governance. Beijing increasingly presents itself as a voice for the global majority and the Global South, where many countries associate today’s instability with Western hegemony, US sanctions, and decades of attempts to reorder other regions by force.