Hasn't almost 1/5 of German voters voted on them? It's quite far from "Nobody takes them seriously". UKIP wasn't taken seriously as well, but it caused the biggest political crisis in decades.
back
2 comments
AfD got 12.6% of the votes in the last federal election, with a turn out of 76.2%, which translates to 9.6% or less than 1/10th of the German electorate voting for them.
By curious conincidence, UKIP also got 12.6% of the UK vote in 2015, so the point still stands.
I wasn't commenting on "the point", just wanted to correct the guess/misremembered information that they got 1/5th of the votes.
AfD actually did influence German politics and policy making a lot, and public debate even more so, in my humble opinion.
From what I have seen, AfD is also a lot more "broadly extremist" than UKIP, but I am very probably pretty biased, being from Germany and having consumed far more German news than British.
Is the UKIP still a relevant party in any way?
I’m not sure. While I broadly agree with what SuddsMcDuff wrote, I literally can’t tell any more.
Trouble is, the UK political scene is currently entirely populated by people who lack the competence to realise there is anything wrong with their own strategies. (All of them, including the groups I used to consider ‘my side’).
So, they might be relevant by default.
Not really. They were seen as a single-issue party and as soon as the Brexit referendum happened their raison d'être disintegrated.
They are still going under different leadership, focusing on other typical right-wing issues. Depending on how things go with Brexit they might well come back into the limelight this year.
I must have confused it with the local elections result or a poll.
UKIP had a well published agenda (leaving the EU being the most prominent item).
AfD avoids making any commitment on what they really want to do[0], they only proclaim that everybody else sucks. They'd be a pretty sorry bunch if they'd end up having to govern.
[0] and I doubt that there's any coherent agenda to that end. At the time where they have to agree on something, I expect a huge fall-out between the camps within the party.