Alice Weidel, a gay woman with a Sri Lankan partner, leads Germany's far-right AfD, which opposes same-sex marriage and champions traditional values.

Who is Germany’s election winner and how will he fare against AfD leader Alice Weidel? - Friedrich Merz has taken aim at the US and says Europe must stand up for itself

Alice Weidel, the chancellor candidate of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), is an unlikely public face for a male-dominated, anti-immigration party that depicts itself as a defender of traditional family values and ordinary people.

Germany’s political system is set up to exclude extremists. Yet the country is waking up to a new political reality that has lurched to the right with the once outcast Alternative for Germany (AfD) party now firmly established in German politics.

Around 250 people protested on Saturday against the leader of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party in the Swiss town where she has a home, sparking counter-demonstrations in a charged atmosphere that led to five arrests,

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.

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The leader of Alternative for Germany (AfD) has said it will be the largest party in Germany by the next election after the far-Right movement finished second to the mainstream conservatives in Sunday’s federal election.

On January 29, MPs from the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) clustered around 46-year-old party leader Alice Weidel in parliament ... the largest in Europe, unravelled.