The Right Promised Prosperity. Where Is It?
From AfD’s German breakthrough to Trump, Milei, Meloni and the global economic experiment: does the new right actually make countries richer?
The new right has made voters an extraordinarily simple offer: immigration brings insecurity, elites have lost control, globalisation has impoverished ordinary citizens, and a return to borders, sovereignty and national preference will restore prosperity.
It is one of the most successful political narratives of our time.
There is only one problem.
When we look at the economic evidence, the promised prosperity is surprisingly difficult to find.
The purpose of this analysis is not to demonstrate that left-wing governments are economically superior by definition. They are not.
Nor is it to pretend that immigration creates no problems, that crime does not exist, or that Europe’s political establishment has governed well. It often has not.
The objective is more uncomfortable:
to compare political promises with measurable outcomes.
And we begin in Germany.
Germany has crossed a line
On 6 September 2026, Alternative für Deutschland achieved its strongest electoral result in its history.
In the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt, AfD received 43.8% of the vote, compared with only 17.2% for the CDU, the party of Chancellor Friedrich Merz. It won 39 of the state parliament’s 83 seats, falling only a few seats short of governing alone. (AP News)
This is not another protest vote that can be casually dismissed.
It is a political earthquake.
AfD is classified as right-wing extremist by German domestic intelligence, and some of its regional structures have pushed rhetoric around mass deportation, ethnic identity and national homogeneity that would have been politically unthinkable in Germany only a generation ago. (AP News)