Farage’s Foreign Funding Scandal and Germany’s Far-Right Breakthrough

Alastair Campbell (0:01)

Let's look at the same week in two different countries. Here in Britain, masked men in black shut down two of the country's busiest ports, protesting about small boat crossings, despite the actual numbers falling. Reform's conference beginning with two senior officials forced to resign over yet another corruption scandal, the Nitro Farage. And in Germany, voters propelling the pro-Russian anti-EU AFD to the cusp of power in Saxony-Anhalt, where it could become the first far-right party to run a German state since the era of the Nazis. This isn't just a British story or a Germany story. Right-wing xenophobic nationalism is on the march across the world. But can it be stopped in Europe? Or are we entering another period of our history to be defined by right-wing extremism? Welcome to The Rest Is Politics, I'm Alastair Campbell.

Rory Stewart (0:57)

And with me, Rory Stewart.

Alastair Campbell (0:58)

And we are going to focus on the hard right, both in Britain and in Germany. We're going to start in Germany after this extraordinary election in the Saxony Anhalt. And then in the second half, we're going to talk about the brilliant TV exposure of the, to my mind, clear law breaking going on in reform fundraising.

And we're going to talk a bit about the confidence that they had and also about these, the media's call them protesters, I call them far-right thugs who were trying to shut down our ports.

Rory Stewart (1:28)

Absolutely brilliant, Alastair. And I think a lot of this is about what are these parties, what's the culture of these parties and the way in my mind that they're just eroding everything that we cared about with democracy.

Alastair Campbell (1:38)

We do seem a bit different today. We're devoting the whole episode to two big stories about the far-right in Europe. And we're starting with Germany because there's this extraordinary election in Saxony Anhalt, which is the smallest of the 16 lender, 2.1 million people. But they had the world's media there this week because this was reckoned to be possibly the first time since Hitler's time that there would be a minister president of a German state, a prime minister as it were, of a German state, who came from the hard right. And the AFD, the alternative for Deutschland, they got a massive 43, almost 44% doubling their support and the CDU, the Christian Democrat Party, which is headed nationally by Friedrich Merz, the chancellor, and locally in the state by Sven Schulze, they saw their support more than half. So pretty seismic and to get our heads around this, we're joined, very happy to be joined by Paul Rondsheimer, who is a senior executive at BILT Seitung. He actually presents one of Germany's biggest podcasts called Rondsheimer, which unlike us, Rory, he does daily. And if he looks a bit exhausted, it's because he's been doing it daily from Zacks and the Anhalt for the last few days. So Paul, we're very, very pleased to have you with us. Right around the world, essentially, there are headlines saying that this election of the smallest of the lender is seismic. Is it being overstated or do you think this really is as significant as people literally right around the world are saying?

Rory Stewart (3:11)

And Paul, would you mind just giving us the figures and reminding people who haven't followed the details of exactly what's happened?

Paul Ronzheimer (3:16)

Yeah, I think it's really significant, not only for Germany. And you could see that in Magdeburg, which is the capital of Saxony-Anhalt. We saw CNN, New York Times. Everybody was there, I think, for the first time ever. And I mean, if we see the numbers, it's the AFD up to 43, 44 percent. You have the CDU down to 17

We have never seen something like that in Germany before. And I would say all the politicians in the past 5, 10 years would always argue that can never happen. Because the AFD, as the right-wing populist or extremist party, the CDU and the now-Chancellor, Friedrich Merz, said that he could have the AFD, and now they are double. If you see Ulrich Siegmund, if you see the people behind Ulrich Siegmund, I mean, you always have to be very carefully with kind of simply calling the AFD the new Nazi party, because historically, this is too simple. But if you see people around Siegmund and what they said in the past, this is really worrying for many people here in Germany. And at the same time, it shows that all the arguments from the CDU, SPD against AFD and also, I mean, the mainstream media talking about the AFD, that people are not listening anymore, that commentators comparing it and telling people, you know, look back in our history, and that people are fed up with it and that they're not listening to these arguments anymore.