An interview with Alice Weidel

Zanny Minton Beddoes (0:10)

Hi, I'm Zanny Minton Beddoes, editor in chief of The Economist and host of The Insider. It's a weekly video show for subscribers that you can watch on The Economist's app or online. Today we're bringing The Insider to our podcast listeners. For this episode, I traveled to Berlin to interview Alice Weidel. She is co-leader of the Alternative for Germany, AfD for short. Her party came out on top in two recent state elections, and it's leading in national polls by a wide margin.

Unlike other parties of Europe's populist right, the AfD appears to be growing more hard line as it gains momentum. It is staunchly pro-Russia. It wants to end all support for Ukraine. It rails against what it sees as Germany's self-destructive embrace of mass migration and calls for the remigration of many foreigners. To many Germans, the AfD's rise has alarming echoes of a dark period in the country's past.

Ms Weidel herself is an unusual standard bearer for such a party. She's a self-proclaimed libertarian conservative, an ex-banker who lives part-time in Switzerland with her Sri Lankan wife and who admires Margaret Thatcher. I wanted to understand what she believes in and what she would try to achieve if she manages to lead her party to power nationally. Here's our conversation for The Insider, in full.

Alice Weidel, thank you for joining me on The Insider.

Alice Weidel (1:37)

Thank you for having me.

Zanny Minton Beddoes (1:38)

So the party you co-lead, the Alternative for Germany, is riding high. You came top in two recent state elections, Saxon Anhalt and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. You're the biggest opposition group in the Bundestag and you come consistently, absolutely at the top of the polls nationally. And I think your success, your rise is reflecting a deep frustration amongst many Germans with the status quo. And you're very good at articulating that frustration. But I think people have less idea of exactly what the AfD would and would not do. And that's what I wanted to focus this conversation on today, to help me and to help our viewers understand what kind of a Germany you would like to create. So I wanted to start with the economy. You are an economist.

If you were to, let's imagine the German economy is a car.

Is it in need of a few repairs? Or is it, does it need a whole new economic model? How big is the challenge for the German economy?

Alice Weidel (2:40)

Actually, to be in your picture, you need to restructure and rebuild the entire car. Because the car parts are also broken. And I am going to explain to you why that is the case in Germany.

I think Germany, just looking at the data, at the economic data, is in a deep crisis. And this crisis is multifaceted.

Firstly, one major cause is the destroying of our energy infrastructure by the so-called Energiewende. So Energiewende is the energy transition policy that was self-inflicted and introduced firstly by the Merkel government and then has been continued by the following governments until now. And these energy policies comprise the destruction of our infrastructure, just like destroying our nuclear power plants. You have to imagine, Germany in the past had 19 power plants. Power plants, most modern ones. So they were just switched off, and some got some explosives, so that they are basically destroyed, right? And now Germany has zero nuclear power plants. So I think Germany has the stupidest and most dumbest or dumbest energy policy worldwide. And it continues. We have the energy transition basing our energy supply solely on wind power and solar power. So when the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine, we have the so-called dunkelflaute. I don't know the English word, so it is like when you have no power supply, basically. And then we are dependent on our neighbors importing energy for, actually, like for tremendously high prices. And all of this leading to the situation in which the energy cost for our companies, for the German companies, and also for the Germans are too high. They are the highest in the world. So therefore, we are not competitive anymore in the world market. And we face right now skyrocketing bankruptcy rates by German companies. Either they go bankrupt or they go abroad.

And this is basically the situation here. And I haven't mentioned yet the high bureaucracy burden by the companies and…

Zanny Minton Beddoes (5:54)

So it's interesting that you mentioned both of those. Because on both of those, I think you have some very good points. Germany does have incredibly high energy costs. I think with hindsight, many people in the government might agree that shutting down the nuclear reactors did not make sense.