Germany’s political establishment has spent years treating Alternative für Deutschland as a problem that could be contained by isolation. Saxony-Anhalt suggests that strategy is approaching its limits. The AfD’s emphatic victory in the eastern German state has not given it an outright parliamentary majority. Yet that may make the result more politically consequential, not less. The party has won enough support to claim a mandate while leaving its opponents with the awkward responsibility of preventing the largest party from governing. Germany’s celebrated Brandmauer ~ the political firewall against cooperation with the far right ~ is now facing its most serious practical test. The dilemma cannot be dismissed simply by invoking democratic arithmetic.

Elections determine representation; they do not oblige parties to form governments with ideological opponents. Mainstream German parties have legitimate reasons for refusing cooperation with an organisation whose regional branches have been classified by domestic intelligence authorities as right-wing extremist. But neither can the political meaning of such a large vote be wished away. A firewall is an instrument of containment, not a substitute for politics. It can keep a party outside........

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