The leading candidate, Friedrich Merz, a conservative who has adopted many of the AfD’s hard-line positions on immigration, used his closing statement of the debate to promise his voters that he would never allow the AfD into his government. Under him, he said, the firewall would hold.

CDU leader Friedrich Merz has ruled out any such alliance but caused uproar last month by bringing a motion to parliament that was passed with AfD votes, breaching a long-standing taboo.

As Germany heads to the polls, a look at the politician cultivating the anti-immigrant party’s ‘image of competence’.

As an openly gay politician who lives with her Sri Lanka-born partner in Switzerland, Alice Weidel was an unusual choice to many to lead Germany's far-right and anti-immigration AfD into

Alice Weidel, the first ever candidate of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party for the post of Chancellar, lives with her partner and two children in Switzerland.

As Dr Weidel took the stage in Halle, the crowd started a chant that was a not-too-subtle play on a Nazi slogan, “Everything for Germany,” a phrase once carved on the knives of Nazi storm troopers. It is banned in Germany.

Alice Weidel, the leader of German far-right party AfD, held secret meetings with Chinese envoy to Germany for years. It has also emerged that she was on China’s payroll for several years.

On Sunday, the country’s residents will vote in a pivotal election in which Ms Weidel's party, Alternative for Germany (AfD), is tipped to come in second. A snap election was called at the end of last year by current Chancellor Olaf Scholz, of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), when his coalition Government fell apart.

Concern is growing over the far-right Alternative for Germany party’s rise ahead of the German election. Its U.S. supporters include Elon Musk and JD Vance.