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

As the Alternative for Germany party secured its best ever election result in Saxony-Anhalt, is the country about to get its first far-right state premier since the Nazi Party, and will Chancellor Friedrich Merz survive the fallout? What does an undercover documentary on Reform's fundraising reveal about the men presenting themselves as the movement's moral and intellectual core, and has the law been broken? Is Europe now entering a new era defined by right-wing extremism? Alastair and Rory are joined by Deputy Editor of Bild-Zeitung, Paul Ronzheimer, who has been on the ground in Saxony-Anhalt, where voters have propelled the pro-Russian, anti-EU AfD to the cusp of power. __________ Be the first person to correctly guess the single word title of Alastair’s upcoming book to win a signed first printing and a personal note from Alastair HERE. Enjoy Rory and Alastair’s interview with Anthony Scaramucci by searching ‘Leading’ on Spotify, Apple, or YouTube. Go deeper into the world of The Rest Is Politics by signing up for our free newsletter HERE, featuring exclusive interviews, analysis and weekend reads from Alastair and Rory. Join The Rest Is Politics Plus. Start your free trial at therestispolitics.com to unlock exclusive bonus content – including Rory and Alastair’s miniseries – plus ad-free listening, early access to episodes and live show tickets, exclusive newsletters, discounted book prices, and a private chatroom on Discord. The Rest Is Politics is powered by Fuse Energy. Stop overpaying for energy. Switch at fuseenergy.com/politics and get a free TRIP+ subscription. 🌏 Upgrade your online protection with an all-in-one security app! Get an exclusive NordVPN deal + 4 months extra here ➼ nordvpn.com/restispolitics It’s risk free with NordVPN’s 30-day money-back guarantee! __________ Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @restispolitics Email: [email protected] __________ Social Producer: Emma Jackson Lead Video Editor: Josh Smith Video Editor: Bruno Di Castri Assistant Producer: Daisy Alston-Horne Producer: Evan Green Exec Producer: Bella Soames Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Alastair Campbell?

  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 Nigel 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?

• 0:47Rory Stewart?

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• 0:50Alastair Campbell?

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• 0:56Rory Stewart?

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• 1:24Alastair Campbell?

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• 1:35Rory Stewart?

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• 1:58Rory Stewart?

  This episode is brought to you by NordVPN.

• 2:01Alastair Campbell?

  And I must thank NordVPN because on my Grand European Tour with Fiona, I was away from the Hawthorns for West Bromwich against Burnley, but I managed to watch it. There you go.

• 2:13Rory Stewart?

  I actually had a NordVPN thank you. I was in the new Starbucks here in Creef. And of course, the thing flashed up, saying this is an unsecured public network. And I was able to go to my VPN. It was a little reminder of something we often forget when we're in all those cafes and things, which is actually genuinely, people can do all kinds of weird cyber attacks and spying if you don't have a virtual private network when you're sitting in that Starbucks.

• 2:37Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I think, are you not really sort of proud of me that I managed to do this? Or should I say Fiona managed to do this?

• 2:44Rory Stewart?

  I'm incredibly proud of you. That's a tech transformation. So to get the best discount off your NordVPN plan, go to nordvpn.com/reisterspolitics. That's nordvpn.com/reisterspolitics. And the link is in the episode description.

• 3:08Alastair Campbell?

  Welcome to the Rest is Politics with me, Alastair Campbell.

• 3:10Rory Stewart?

  And with me, Rory Stewart.

• 3:12Alastair Campbell?

  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 Saxony Anhalt. And then in the second half, we're going to talk about the brilliant TV exposure of the, to my mind, clear lawbreaking going on in Reform fundraising. And we're going to talk a bit about the confidence that they had and also about these... The mediaists call them protesters. I call them far-right thugs who were trying to shut down our ports.

• 3:42Rory Stewart?

  Absolutely brilliant, Alistair. 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.

• 3:51Alastair Campbell?

  We're doing something 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 was 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.

• 4:32Alastair Campbell?

  And the CDU, the Christian Democrat Party, which is headed nationally by Friedrich Merz, the Chancellor, and locally in this 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 Rentsheimer, who is a senior executive at Bildseitl. He actually presents one of Germany's biggest podcasts called Rentsheimer, which, unlike us, Rory, he does daily. And if he looks a bit exhausted, it's because he's been doing it daily from Saxony 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.

• 5:17Alastair Campbell?

  Is it being overstated? Or do you think this really is as significant as people, literally, right around the world are saying?

• 5:24Rory Stewart?

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

• 5:29Speaker 02

  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%. 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 five, 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

• 6:13Speaker 02

  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.

• 6:57Speaker 02

  That commentators comparing it and telling people, you know, look back in our history, that people are fed up with it and that they're not listening to these arguments anymore.

• 7:08Rory Stewart?

  To step back, why should people care about the AfD? Tell us who the AfD are, why they're interesting, and what this tension is between the story around the man that has dominated the election in Saxony Anhalt, Ulrich Siegmund, and the other characters? Is it a party we need to be worried about and why?

• 7:26Speaker 02

  So the AfD came up in Germany in 2013, first as an anti-Euro party during the Euro crisis. Listeners remember the crisis in Greece and the bailout. So that were the first steps. But after the big migration crisis in 2015, the AfD became bigger and bigger. And it was already during the time of Angela Merkel, you know, having the biggest opposition against the migration course. But not only that, it's not only a populist party you could see in Italy or France or other European countries.

• 8:09Speaker 02

  It's also a party with right-wing extremists. It's a party with fascists inside. For example, the party now in Saxony Anhalt was Ulrich Siegmund. You have people around him, 15, 20 years ago, they were in kind of youth fascist groups and were really having extremist ideas. This is one thing which is worrying for many people here in Germany. And then there is also like lots of politicians inside the AfD praising Russia and Putin, like very pro-Russian, pro-Putin party.

• 8:52Speaker 02

  We have people in Magdeburg, you know, they would go to the Russian Embassy for Putin's birthday. They would go to Russia right after the full-scale invasion against Ukraine. They would argue that they could understand what Putin did. So I would say, and these two things, really extremist politicians and advisers inside the party, and then the pro-Putin part of it, this makes dangerous. And this is why people are worrying that this could change Germany and that this in Magdeburg and Saxony Anhalt could only be the beginning.

• 9:34Speaker 02

  Because if we see the numbers now, and we have a new poll which came up today, you see that the CDU, the party of the Chancellor, is only at 19.5% anymore. And we see the AfD coming up to 29. So there's a big gap. And people are worrying, this, what happened now there could be the beginning, and that is what the AfD hopes of a blue wave in Germany.

• 10:03Alastair Campbell?

  And we've got these two other elections coming up in a couple of weeks' time in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, which is very AfD strong, and then in Berlin, where maybe the social democrats are a bit stronger. But Paul, I was, this is like a return leg. I was on your podcast last week and I told you this story about when I was, when we were travelling in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. And I met a woman who told me about how she yearned for the old days of the DDR, the old East Communist East Germany. And she talked about how we had greater freedom. I was absolutely, I don't know if you know the word gobsmacked, but I was absolutely gobsmacked by that. But then listening to a lot of the AFD politicians, there is this kind of nostalgia

• 10:47Alastair Campbell?

  for communism from a very, very right wing, as you say, borderline fascist party.

• 10:53Speaker 02

  There is this nostalgia and we maybe have to explain, there is kind of, or there were kind of two parties in the western part of Germany and then in the eastern part. And where you travelled and where the election was, this is a party where you have a lot of nostalgia. Um, you have a lot of uh people and that's why it works so well for the AFD, who would tell you on the street why Russia isn't that bad. We should make peace and we should understand Putin, you know, all the arguments from the pro-Russian side. And you have also a lot of people who would argue, you know, in the past, we had a better life. And I mean, if you see the numbers, it's not true, but it's emotions, it's feelings.

• 11:36Speaker 02

  And the AFD did a very smart election campaign. I mean, you could see Ulrich Siegmund, you know, would always have these kind of positive um emotions and would say, we have to change, we shouldn't give the money to Ukraine anymore. Um, we don't, we don't want migrants anymore and we have to change the landscape. And this, what, what he argued helped him and he was very different to others inside the AFD. If we would compare it, for example, to Björn Harker, who was the face of the AFD in the east before in Türring, he was much more, people would say dark and a bit evil and, you know, he wouldn't smile that much.

• 12:21Speaker 02

  But Ulrich Siegmund showed that you could also win an election with a very, for, for the people there, positive emotion.

• 12:29Rory Stewart?

  Hmm. One of the things that is also striking is, as you say, they began as an anti-Europe party. And quite a lot of their policies sound like they're not compatible with Schengen. So in practice, quite a lot of what they're pushing for if they took power would be a real threat to the survival of the European Union. A Germany that was committed to leaving the Euro, disrupting Schengen, would, would hit the fundamentals of the European Union.

• 12:56Speaker 02

  Absolutely. I mean, we could see that, there was an interview with Alice Vidal just three weeks ago. And she would argue that the AFD still wants to leave the Eurozone. I mean, that they want to get out of Euro. This was kind of um surprising because if you have the numbers the AFD has right now, up to, you know, twenty nine percent, eight to ten percent more than the party of the chancellor, you would think they would go a little bit more mainstream. So not to fear, not to, you know, also tell people, look, you know, if we would take power, not everything would change. And, and, and if you talk to experts in Germany, everybody, or like, most of them would argue,

• 13:41Speaker 02

  it would be a big, big danger for Germany as an expert-oriented nation, you know, to leave the Euro. But she still said that in this interview. And this shows how different this party is in these days compared also to Le Pen, compared to other parties in the EU, because Le Pen didn't want to work with the AFD in Brussels. You know, they would argue, this party, the AFD, is too extreme for Le Pen. So I think this shows a lot.

• 14:14Alastair Campbell?

  Two questions about what happens now. So the, the numbers have fallen, so that to get a, a majority, the AFD needs three of the other MPs to support them. And it's a secret ballot to choose the minister president, which I find very, very strange. So first question, do you think there will be some CDU elected representatives who will back Ulrich Siegmund to be minister president? And the second question, does Friedrich Merz survive this?

• 14:43Speaker 02

  The head of the AFD and others would go public and say they talk with members of the CDU during these days. We don't know any names, we don't know if that's true. I personally haven't heard anything about it. I was in Magdeburg, I also talked to many CDU politicians there. I don't know a name, maybe it's just strategy tactic um of Ulrich Siegmund during these days. We will see. I mean, it's absolutely possible. In the past, there were, if we go back ten years, there were lots of CDU politicians switching to the AFD. So I think that is a possibility. And probably it will also be important to see what happens inside the party.

• 15:28Speaker 02

  You know, in which direction the CDU goes in Saxony Anhalt, because um we see now the now prime minister, Sven Schulze, will probably resign as the head of the CDU there. So we'll see what happens. If this will not be successful, they need the BSW, the Bündnis Sarah Wagenknecht. It's a party which was founded just before the general elections, two years ago. Also very pro-Russian, I mean, Sarah Wagenknecht comes from the left wing, the Linkspartei, but now is leaning more towards possible coalitions with the AFD.

• 16:08Speaker 02

  So the right wing populist, right wing extreme, together with left wing populist, left wing extreme. And this is right now, if he wouldn't find MPs from the CDU, his only chance. But then he has not a big majority, so it's a big danger, it's a secret election. Even if you go on in the next months and years, um will be very problematic for him to find majorities. Second question you ask about Friedrich Merz, and I talked a lot with people here in Berlin lately, in the past days. I mean, there is literally nobody who would argue that Friedrich Merz has a big chance to survive as the head of the CDU.

• 16:51Speaker 02

  That's what I'm hearing during these days. There is always, you know, a possibility, of course. I mean, he is the elected chancellor and, I mean, if, if he doesn't want to leave, nobody can really force him. But there is discussions about several prime ministers like Markus Söder in Bavaria, Henrik Wüst in Nordrhein-Westfalen, Boris Rhein in Hessen, these are the major ones.

• 17:18Alastair Campbell?

  We need to get the SPD back in power.

• 17:20Speaker 02

  I hear that from, from politicians inside the party. They're now trying to make a plan during these days because they are waiting for the next elections in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern in Berlin. So if this was the election, I think the discussion would be already there, also public. But, you know, they don't want to risk the next elections in two weeks. And also for them, yeah, they need a strategy. So still, I would say they, they don't have it yet.

• 17:52Rory Stewart?

  Paul, how are we meant to understand Merz's failure? Is he the German equivalent of Keir Starmer? That the basic problem is he doesn't know how to communicate. So it's not really about the policies. I mean, of course, there's policy problems, he's got a coalition, maybe he's not getting through his radical reforms. But fundamentally, he hasn't captured the imagination of the German people. So maybe the argument is as it was with Britain. Listen, we might as well try again, this guy's useless. We don't know whether the next guy's going to be any better, but he can't be worse.

• 18:21Speaker 02

  Well, you're absolutely right, um that people would criticize his communication skills just before the election in Magdeburg. And he would say, they are Wutburger, you know, people didn't understand what he was doing there. They didn't want him to, to campaign.

• 18:38Rory Stewart?

  Alastair, what is a Wutburger?

• 18:39Alastair Campbell?

  A Wutburger, we're talking about angry people.

• 18:42Speaker 02

  Angry people, yeah, sorry, should have translated that.

• 18:44Alastair Campbell?

  Angry citizens.

• 18:45Rory Stewart?

  So this is his equivalent of Hillary Clinton calling Trump voters deplorables or something?

• 18:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, people are really upset about that, yeah. And this happens and, and people would criticize, um, you know, he, he, he comes back from holidays. They're not really a strategy, what to do next. Now, after the elections, you could see him inside the Konrad Adenauer House, the headquarters of the party. And, you know, he would describe the situation as is, as it is, but there's no plan. So people are like, okay, but you're the head of the CDU, you're the chancellor. You know, what should we do now? We want answers from you, you know? And it's not only inside his party, if you talk to people inside the SPD, um they're fed up with him

• 19:31Speaker 02

  because they feel like, you know, we, we, we can't really govern with this chancellor. They've been criticizing him a lot and you hear that from every side. So, but I, I wouldn't say it's only communications. I mean, it's not only what he says publicly, but it's also internally. He is not what Angela Merkel would do. She would be on the phone with all the people inside the party all the time. She would find, uh, you know, to try, try to find um a way and, and try to find a strategy. And for Friedrich Merz, um, people say, you know, he is not the right man at the right time.

• 20:10Alastair Campbell?

  Paul, we've had Gerald Knaus on the podcast a couple of times, who's the immigration researcher and real campaigner. And he's always been of the view that the political establishment has to face up to the fact that this is an anti-constitutional party. They seem scared to make that case. Is that debate as alive in Germany as Gerald would like it to be? Or now that in one part of Germany they're over forty percent, does that become impossible to start to argue that they, they can be tackled, as it were, through the courts?

• 20:39Speaker 02

  Well, it's, it's, it's very hard now. If you have a party, you know, with forty three, forty four percent, I don't see it. I think the problem is that politicians from the CDU and the SPD and the Greens would always argue how dangerous the AFD is, but wouldn't do anything because they, they were scared. They were like, okay, you know, if we go to the court, if we, if we start in so-called AfD-Verbotserfahren in, in German.

• 21:08Alastair Campbell?

  AFD ban.

• 21:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. If you, trying to ban this party, that the AFD would only go stronger. But the problem is, also during this campaign, so you would argue on the one side, oh, this party is so dangerous and, you know, it's, it's back to nineteen thirty-three and look at the people inside the party. So there's more and more people arguing, okay, but if you say they're so dangerous, why is there, why, why are you not trying to ban them? So it's a, it's a logical question, you know, at the end. And I don't see it to happen. I mean, imagine, you know, on the streets, if you, if you have a party

• 21:50Speaker 02

  with up to twenty nine, thirty percent in, in whole Germany. On the other hand, if you could also argue, you know,

• 22:00Alastair Campbell?

  It shouldn't matter if they have thirty or ten percent, right?

• 22:04Rory Stewart?

  There are two things that confuse me about the AFD. One is that Alice Vidal is a great expert on China, lived in China, speaks Chinese, did her doctorate on China, but she doesn't talk about the second China shock. She doesn't really take an interest in probably the most devastating thing in German politics, which is the impact of Chinese industrial policy on Germany. And the second thing is, I don't understand the AFD's complete refusal to enter into coalitions and what their long-term strategy is here. They're never going to get more than fifty percent of the vote. So how can they have a political strategy of no coalition?

• 22:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, the China shock two zero is a very interesting question. And it's not only that she's not criticizing China, you could see her joining events in the Chinese embassy, you could also see her defending Chinese policy. If people discuss with her, she would always argue, we need to have good ties to everybody, to the US, to Russia, to China. And, you know, if we don't criticize them that much, we can have a bigger business, you know, we can have cheap gas and oil again, you know, we could export in a much better way with China. And she would go on with a Germany first policy.

• 23:24Speaker 02

  But at the same time, and I mean, this is very interesting for you as listeners, because if you see that they also try, you know, to have good ties with Donald Trump and Elon Musk, and Elon Musk congratulated Ulrich Siegmond, and Donald Trump showed the statistics from Magdeburg. So it can't really work with all of them, right? And the second about coalitions, there was different strategies in the past. Now, I think they just want to be as big as possible. You could also see experts arguing in the past five, 10 years, there's no way the AFD

• 24:07Speaker 02

  would reach twenty five percent, you know? Then they argued, there's no way they could reach thirty, because, you know, this is impossible. So the AFD would argue, if it goes on like this in Germany with economy, migration. And also I have to say, you know, I travel a lot in Saxony, it's a lot about Ukraine and Ukraine help and Russia. You know, we talk about reforms in Germany and at the same time, we give a lot of money to Ukraine. So people would argue, how can that be? Is it fair? Is it not fair? So there's big topics and, yeah.

• 24:49Speaker 02

  So they think they can get like way higher than thirty percent, maybe thirty five, maybe higher, you know, that's their strategy. And then, and I think that's still the case, they want to destroy the CDU, you know, they want to have maybe a small CDU with people who would do a coalition with them, or, you know, they would change the whole party and they would more go into the direction of the AFD. I think that's their strategy.

• 25:20Alastair Campbell?

  You did a two-part documentary about Saxony and Halle. You did something very interesting, because often people say politicians don't listen to the people. And you set yourself up in this town square with a table and just a couple of chairs, and you just got people to come and talk to you. If you had to boil down, and I was struck actually by the very, very kind of varied things that they were saying, but if you had to boil down what you heard from the people on that square in Saxony and Halle, what's the, what is the big thing that kind of unites someone, is making them turn towards the AFD?

• 25:52Speaker 02

  The big thing is, we are fed up with what we've seen in the past years from the CDU and the SPD. There was many people telling me, you know, during the last elections, I gave my last vote to Friedrich Merz. Actually, it's interesting, Friedrich Merz in Saxony, people liked him a lot when he was in opposition, you know, like they liked him a lot as somebody, you know, we have to change Germany, we have to reforms, have to be tough in migration. But they're disappointed. And now they're like, okay, you know, we tried everything, we tried Merz, we tried Olaf Scholz before, you know, we voted for Angela Merkel, but we are fed up, we want something else.

• 26:36Speaker 02

  We don't really believe that the AFD will change or make our lives better, but now it's a time for something else. And that's what I heard a lot.

• 26:48Alastair Campbell?

  And they don't care that Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump are sitting there rubbing their hands at it?

• 26:52Speaker 02

  No, and this struck me a lot, you know, I mean, I'm a war and crisis reporter and I travel a lot to Ukraine and, you know, I saw the war from the frontline. And now people would argue there, there's different arguments. They would say, look, you know, we know, we know who the Russians are, they were here before, so we don't want to have a war with them, we are afraid of the Russians. This is one argument I would always hear. The second is, why do we have to pay so much money for Ukraine? We don't understand if at the same time, our budget is cut, this is not fair and we have to stop that.

• 27:36Speaker 02

  And the third thing is, and also, I mean, the AFD did a lot of propaganda in this direction is, you know, if we have good relations with Russia, our economy, you know, will work much better than now, I mean, talking about gas.

• 27:53Alastair Campbell?

  Well, Paul, thank you so much, and we'll maybe talk to you again after, because this is a long-running thing, we'll maybe keep in touch as these other Lender election come through. Thank you so much for your time.

• 28:02Speaker 02

  Thank you so much for having me and was also great to have you on our podcast.

• 28:07Rory Stewart?

  Thank you, Paul. Bye-bye.

• 28:08Alastair Campbell?

  So Rory, before we go to the break, I know how you love to do a plug, I'm going to do a plug today, but it's a plug with a difference. As you know, I have a book coming out on October the 22nd, and it is going to be announced to the world on Friday.

• 28:21Rory Stewart?

  The title of the book.

• 28:22Alastair Campbell?

  The title of the book.

• 28:23Rory Stewart?

  So you're not going to tell us now?

• 28:24Alastair Campbell?

  Well, you know, so stop pretending. But what we're doing, if people go to the episode description, they will see there is a very exciting competition there. If you can guess the one-word title of my book. Now, the publisher's got this idea, we give you a signed copy, I'm going to do so much better than that, we'll decide when we go, but it's time, every reply will be time stamped. And because of that, we'll know when the first one comes in, because I'm incredibly generous, there'll be more than one, get something out of this. So one word, like, might I suggest, Middle Land by Rory Stewart? Weimar that we talked about recently. So there's one word.

• 29:03Rory Stewart?

  Jacques Hughes, does that count as two words?

• 29:04Alastair Campbell?

  I'm going for two words with that, with the apostrophe over there. But Reds by Paul Mason, new book, which I've just been reading. So one word, and it will be out on October 22nd. We're also going to be doing a mini-series on it, so we're very excited about that.

• 29:19Rory Stewart?

  Well done on getting a book written. I mean, that's one of the things I've noticed with a podcast, is it's quite difficult finding the time to write a book.

• 29:25Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, well, I did it over the summer on the move throughout Europe. But anyway, I'm very excited about it. I think it's going to be good. I think it's really, really interesting.

• 29:31Rory Stewart?

  And I think I'm going to get to interview you a bit.

• 29:33Alastair Campbell?

  Apparently you are.

• 29:34Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 29:35Alastair Campbell?

  We're going to do an interview on the mini-series.

• 29:36Rory Stewart?

  Very much, yeah. And think about Alistair. I mean, could this be about football? Could this be about dogs? Could this be about politics? You know, there's a hell of a lot of directions you could go with that one word.

• 29:47Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. And by the way, I'm ready for the insults. I got one last night in an event I was doing and somebody came up and said, I've got it, it's liar. Fine, so you can do that, do whatever you want, okay? Could be Burnley, could be Blair, could be lots of, it could be trees.

• 30:01Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, see?

• 30:02Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. So this book, one word, so to enter, go to the link in the episode description, you've got till midnight Thursday to get your guesses in. Thank you very much. Take a break.

• 30:25Speaker 03

  The Great Game, Strategic Struggle Between Britain and Russia.

• 30:33Speaker 04

  We assess Prime Minister with high confidence it was Russian.

• 30:39Speaker 05

  Holding the Russians accountable is World War III.

• 30:41Speaker 06

  They took down a British passenger jet containing three hundred and fifty people.

• 30:44Speaker 03

  Man in the Kremlin is playing, Alex. Got to ask yourself, do you want to play or not? You're the Prime Minister. You've done nothing.

• 30:58Speaker 07

  We would need to understand the policy context.

• 31:00Speaker 03

  All the relevant context will be structured as a framework today and disseminated into an operation order, or Fragile.

• 31:08Speaker 05

  Fragile that says to kill the President of Russia.

• 31:13Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 31:15Speaker 05

  New from Goldhanger. Who is going to be able to pull this off?

• 31:20Speaker 08

  You're my soldier, are you? Sergeant Tom McDuff, Duffy.

• 31:24Speaker 05

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• 31:26Speaker 08

  Men like Duffy, they are our most valuable weapons.

• 31:30Speaker 05

  Devized as a technically rigorous geopolitical action thriller.

• 31:35Speaker 05

  Where Britain plays its strongest hand. He's the best. Against its strongest foe.

• 31:42Speaker 05

  Bear Hunt. Available now wherever you get your podcasts.

• 32:01Alastair Campbell?

  Welcome back to The Rest Is Politics with me, Alastair Campbell.

• 32:03Rory Stewart?

  And with me, Rory Stewart. Now, Alistair, firstly, thank you very, very much for Powell and the AFD. I want to move us, though, on to Reform in Britain. And obviously, we'll have a chance to talk about whether Reform is the AFD or not. But let's, let's start with this scandal. I have become, as you keep mocking me, totally obsessed with this amazing documentary. So, a huge shout out, I mean, for anybody listening who wants to be a journalist, this is an unbelievable thing. An undercover reporter spent nearly 12 months pretending to be the son of an American billionaire

• 32:43Rory Stewart?

  from Wyoming and going to meetings with more and more senior Reform figures in order to see if they would be willing, basically, to take money, illegal money from an American donor. You're not supposed to take money from American donors, right? And it's a hell of a thing. And actually, at some point, I'd, I'd love to have more of a chat with him, even if we don't do it on the show, because the guy had to change his credit card, his social media account, his name. And he must have been terrified going into these meetings in Britain, that somebody would know him under his real name and come up to him and stop him. Anyway, he pulled it off. Brilliant. But the thing that's frustrating me is that when we did our live show, I asked for a show of hands of how many people had actually watched the documentary.

• 33:19Alastair Campbell?

  This is the weekend at the Festival Hall, yeah.

• 33:21Rory Stewart?

  And, look, our live show audience are like the most motivated, I would have thought, people to get into politics, this kind of thing.

• 33:30Alastair Campbell?

  You'd have thought so.

• 33:31Rory Stewart?

  And barely 10% of them have watched it. And that is a big problem.

• 33:34Alastair Campbell?

  They were aware of it, though.

• 33:35Rory Stewart?

  They were aware of it.

• 33:36Alastair Campbell?

  Aware of the story.

• 33:36Rory Stewart?

  They're aware of it. But I think one of the problems is that you only see why it's so killing for Reform when you watch the full half an hour. That if you just pull out as, you know, there are questions were raised about whether a permissible US donor could finance £33,000 of polling, it sounds very minor. The real story is what it shows about Reform, and in particular, what it shows about its moral and intellectual centre.

• 34:02Alastair Campbell?

  Lack of.

• 34:03Rory Stewart?

  Yeah. So the moral and intellectual centre, I think this, this winds you up less than it does me, because you despair of Reform so much, you're not even yet interested in this problem.

• 34:11Alastair Campbell?

  No, I'm very interested in it.

• 34:13Rory Stewart?

  But James Orr.

• 34:14Alastair Campbell?

  You're saying I have no morals?

• 34:15Rory Stewart?

  No, no, I'm just saying that you basically have written them off so much, you can hardly be bothered to even look into it.

• 34:19Alastair Campbell?

  That's not true.

• 34:20Rory Stewart?

  Anyway, I might, the reason I'm so.

• 34:22Alastair Campbell?

  Just because I haven't watched it. I've watched it twice. You've watched it eight times, okay?

• 34:25Rory Stewart?

  The reason I'm so wound up is this guy, James Orr, he was somebody who represented people who want to say that the far right is not a kind of dangerous populist movement, but instead it's morally serious, it's Christian, it's rejecting these corrupt elites. And there are lots of, particularly young men, getting behind that story. You'll see them at Cambridge University, you'll see them unfortunately in churches around the country. They're people who think that they're not just unpleasant racist people, that they're people who are standing up for Christianity, morality, virtue, seriousness. And here is this guy, James Orr,

• 35:08Rory Stewart?

  who is a Cambridge professor, who got this extraordinary profile in the Financial Times with a glamorous picture of him on the front cover, who is able to talk about Hagel, who reaches out to J D Vance. And it's a reminder that when these parties come, and this has been true for right wing parties throughout history, they often have these figures at the fringes, who give a sense of real kind of intellectual seriousness and respectability, that this man is meant to be austere, concerned with kind of truth, justice in the British way.

• 35:44Alastair Campbell?

  Professor of ethics and divinity.

• 35:46Rory Stewart?

  Yeah. And that's why when you see him sitting in his fancy suit with his hair swished back, hitting the cocktails, talking about how he doesn't care about the Electoral Commission, he's going to get around the law, he's going to go on Signal so people can't see his things, against transparency, against truth, against being honest with the British public, or even his own boss, deliberately circumventing the law in order to lie to the British people and promote his party. Look at that and see the moral quality of this man. And see the moral quality of all these people. You cannot allow Danny Kruger, James Orr, J D Vance to present themselves as great moral exemplars. They are revolting human beings who are using their

• 36:28Rory Stewart?

  ability to talk about Hagel to endorse very dangerous, destructive, anti-democratic politics, which is corrupt.

• 36:35Alastair Campbell?

  Your point about people not knowing unless they really immerse themselves in it, and I think you're right about that, because what happens is that, you know, the documentary explodes, you've got lots and lots of coverage, then within 24 hours, it was Nigel Farage has denied any wrongdoing. You know, focus on the alleged wrongdoing, not what he's saying about it. And then, of course, there was their conference going on, what have you. But last night, Rory, we're going to talk about Ukraine in Q and A this week. Last night, I was doing this event with Luke Harding, who's just written this book about Ukraine, and it's called Betrayal, it's the betrayal of Trump and Putin. But also, he's got a very big section on Nathan Gill, and on the fact that the Russians essentially turned Nathan Gill into an agent, and he's now serving 10 years in jail.

• 37:19Rory Stewart?

  Former colleague of Nigel Farage.

• 37:20Alastair Campbell?

  Former colleague of Nigel Farage in the European Parliament, very leading figure, leader of the party in Wales. We had about 350 people in the King's Place. I asked for a show of hands of these people who'd paid money to come and hear somebody talk about a book about Russia and Ukraine, who had heard of Nathan Gill. It was about a third of the hands. Who has not heard of Nathan Gill? It was two thirds. And I said, who has heard of Profumo? Every single hand went up.

• 37:50Rory Stewart?

  Extraordinary.

• 37:50Alastair Campbell?

  Nathan Gill is serving a jail sentence as an elected British politician for helping Russia

• 37:56Rory Stewart?

  And taking cash.

• 37:57Alastair Campbell?

  in the war against Ukraine and taking money. And this very edgy, so, so what, and that's, that's down to the media. They covered it as a one day wonder.

• 38:04Rory Stewart?

  There's been such a degradation of our politics that we've normalized bad behaviour so, so much. And we've become so polarised. So I was talking to a relative who was sympathetic towards Reform, whose response was, as you, guess what the defence was when I forced them to watch this documentary?

• 38:22Alastair Campbell?

  They all do it.

• 38:22Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, exactly. All the politicians do it. And, and the great one was, and of course, they go after Reform much more than they would after a mainstream.

• 38:30Alastair Campbell?

  Which is bullshit. I mean, what damage was Keir Starmer, did Keir Starmer get for just taking a pair of glasses?

• 38:34Rory Stewart?

  Exactly.

• 38:35Alastair Campbell?

  Five million quid. We don't even talk about five million quid anymore.

• 38:38Rory Stewart?

  You've totally got it. They're all up to it. So what is it that we see in this documentary? What we see is that it shows something deep about the values of this man, James Orr, and I think actually the values of Danny Kruger, too, who, incidentally, while posing as the great Christian moral figure, refused to condemn his colleagues when they lied about Kemmy Badenoch during the elections. He just wouldn't come out and say that the whole story that she had been.

• 39:04Alastair Campbell?

  White lives don't matter.

• 39:05Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, thought white lives don't matter. And he totally refused to clarify, condemn, or do anything. In this case, what's wrong with what happened? What's wrong with what happened is this. Reform commissioned a poll, a guy called Dan Dukes commissioned a poll, and the point of the poll for them is to put it on the front page, The Telegraph and other newspapers, showing that people are supporting Reform at a critical moment before elections. So it's really important part of their PR strategy. They then arrange for the poll to be paid for by this American donor from an American company. In order to do so, we have them admitting that this isn't legal, we have them going on to Signal because they want to

• 39:50Rory Stewart?

  conceal any chance of anybody seeing him. We have him saying that the Electoral Commission is useless and are never going to catch them. So what does this represent? It represents complete lack of transparency, not being honest with the British people, deceiving the British people, deceiving the Electoral Commission, breaking the law, and then this incredible kind of Henry the Second Beckett defence, which is, oh, Nigel doesn't want to know about it. And, and the undercover journalist keeps saying, does, does, does Nigel know about it? If I meet him, if my dad meets him, well, I don't want to know about the details. But of course, you know, he knows. And they start inviting the guy to donor conferences, and then he says, and this is the killer, he says explicitly, because we cannot get donations from UK domicile donors.

• 40:33Alastair Campbell?

  But also, there is a meet, one of the key moments in the film is where he does meet Nigel Farage during the Clacton by-election. So there's an election that's been called because of this five million donation from a Thailand crypto billionaire. He's only having that election allegedly to allow the Clacton people to be his jury, rather than a court where it should be. And Nigel Farage is clearly aware, because he says, boom, it worked for a pretty small investment, okay? And then goes on television, our television, and says, I wasn't really listening.

• 41:06Rory Stewart?

  Two questions about, two questions about judgement.

• 41:09Alastair Campbell?

  Imagine if, imagine if any other politician had done that.

• 41:11Rory Stewart?

  Well, apart from the wrongdoing, simply a question of political judgement. This is my election, which was dominated by the news or the allegation that posh George Cotterill had illegally siphoned money through his mother to pay for our, which they were denying. And in the middle of that very by-election, while that story's breaking, the journalists from this amazing production company, Verbatim, must have been thinking, well, we're never going to be able to get our meeting now, given that they're already mad and scum. He's prepared to sit down with someone who says, let me just clarify, this is my dad's American money siphoned through me, his relative, to give to you.

• 41:44Alastair Campbell?

  Through a family trust.

• 41:44Rory Stewart?

  Is that okay with you?

• 41:46Alastair Campbell?

  And by the way, they've since then, so when Reform now say there'll be an investigation, so Dan Dukes and James Orr get suspended, pending a full inquiry, investigation, blah, blah, blah. As far as I understand it, listening to all the blather they've come out with as they keep changing their line, the investigation is going effectively to be into the TV programme. And they're talking about it being entrapment. Okay. Now, the first thing is, it is legitimate under the code of Ofcom and everybody else to expose wrongdoing using subterfuge. You should give up if you don't find it, but clearly from the word go, given that they're saying in interviews with him, being secretly recorded through his buttonhole, they're admitting that

• 42:29Alastair Campbell?

  they want to try to sort of circumnavigate, circumvent the law.

• 42:32Rory Stewart?

  Because they can't get UK domicile people.

• 42:34Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. And then the second, the second thing that I think is really important, you know, you're, the James Johnson, whose polling we used, we used his poll before the last election. Their big line now is that this poll was not, quote, commissioned by them. Well, who did commission it? Because James Johnson, he's also on camera, essentially saying that they're using this device to pay him. So the poll is done, commissioned, we're going to get this guy to pay you for it. Now, that is, I've spoken to somebody who knows electoral law inside out, who says that if it is the case that Orr and Dukes have organised for this poll, without the

• 43:15Alastair Campbell?

  treasurer of the party knowing where that money's coming from, they are potentially in breach of the law. Let me just tell you about the criminal offences that they might, the police might have to consider. The main one is entering into or furthering an arrangement which facilitates or is likely to facilitate the making of donations by an impermissible donor. Now, you've seen the film 27,000 times, Rory, do you think that might fall into that category? I, I, I, I would certainly say as a legal expert that it certainly gives that impression. Okay, so the second section 61 offence of the P P E R A, which is the act that

• 43:55Alastair Campbell?

  we're talking about, is a person deceiving their treasurer about a donation. So the treasurer will have to be called to give evidence, I'd have thought, which can include an official not telling the treasurer about a donation with intent to deceive. So that means unless we discover that James Orr, Dan Dukes and Nigel Farage have told the treasurer about this impermissible donation, they have committed a criminal offence.

• 44:21Rory Stewart?

  Just to go back to the basics and what the barrister explains very well in this documentary that I'm endlessly promoting, is, is what's the point of all this? And let's just step away from the law back to the purpose of this. The whole point of our electoral laws is to prevent foreign citizens from funding British parties. And this entire arrangement is in a way to get an American billionaire from Wyoming purportedly to support Reform, because Reform can't get money out of UK domicile donors. So that, that's all we have to remember, that the whole law was written for that purpose. We believe that British politics should be funded by UK domicile donors for a good reason, because we don't want Russians giving money, Chinese giving money, or even far-right donors from Wyoming supporting our parties.

• 45:06Rory Stewart?

  And that would be normal in any country, right? Britain's not unusual, you can't do it in the States. Imagine the outrage in the States if it turned out that some British woke left-wing donor was funding the Democratic Party in the United States. It's completely illegal, people would go to jail. Look, I'm not a legal expert, but I have studied this particular bit of the law, and it's very difficult to believe, watching that documentary, that these people have not broken certainly the spirit of the law. And if people have broken the law, then people should, in my opinion, go to jail. Let's then move on to two other things which get coverage but which aren't made part of the story. So in the Reform Conference, a activist stood up and started asking questions about

• 45:50Rory Stewart?

  corruption and Farage.

• 45:52Alastair Campbell?

  And climate.

• 45:53Rory Stewart?

  And climate. She was grabbed by the hair, half-pulled on the ground, appears to have been hit with a stick and dragged out of the thing, right? And what are the responses you get? Lee Anderson says, we'll have a whip around for a new stick. Robert Jenrick says, yeah, what is there to see here, basically?

• 46:13Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 46:14Rory Stewart?

  And so there is a coarsening here. I mean, this is why I want to go to the point of the sort of moral sensibility, and maybe this is a transition back to the AFD. What we're trying to say about these parties is something that's quite difficult to notice, which is they are getting rid of norms that we took for granted. Assaulting a woman in a conference in that way would have been, five years ago, unbelievably outrageous, and I think every party leader would have come out and condemned it, right? This sort of incredible corruption, there would have been an immediate series of resignations, right?

• 46:59Rory Stewart?

  And this is what I think the new world is that we've seen just since the podcast started. I mean, we just did this live show and we're talking about the fact we've only been going for four years. The transition from the world that we came into, which was the world of Sanamarin, of Jacinta Arden, Justin Trudeau, Macron's second election, into this world is a world where, above all, with Trump, but actually it's the story of the AFD and it's the story of Le Pen and it's the story of Reform too, is a story about the fact that things we took for granted, norms, values, democratic behaviour, are all going out the window and our politics

• 47:38Rory Stewart?

  is becoming more violent, less honest, more polarised, coarser and more brutal all the time.

• 47:46Alastair Campbell?

  Well, Trump is a big driver of that. And as, as, as Paul said in the first half, you know, Trump posted. I mean, it's like him sort of deciding to post about the West Midlands Metro Mayor Authority elections, you know, he's, he's posted about that. Why? Because the far-right is one. It's part of their national security strategy to, to support parties of the far-right. They actually think Reform are not far-right enough now, which is why Musk is backing Rupert, Rupert Lowe. But they, they, I, I, my sense is, I'm not a lawyer, but I know people who are, by trying to get round a law which bans these foreign donations, impermissible donors, that in itself is breaking the law. And that, I think, is where, where this will go to.

• 48:29Rory Stewart?

  Final one for me. The thing that worried me most of all is the Reform Chair saying that the potential Labour candidate to replace Keir Starmer, who's now announced that he's stepping down, it's going to be a by-election.

• 48:41Alastair Campbell?

  Zia Yousaf.

• 48:42Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, that the questions should be raised because she wasn't born in Britain. She is a British citizen.

• 48:49Alastair Campbell?

  She's also a brilliant council leader, let me tell you.

• 48:52Rory Stewart?

  Regardless of how brilliant she is.

• 48:53Alastair Campbell?

  But she is.

• 48:53Rory Stewart?

  What, what are they saying? What are they saying that a British citizen isn't a British citizen because they weren't born in Britain? I wasn't born in Britain.

• 49:00Alastair Campbell?

  No, Boris Johnson wasn't born in Britain.

• 49:02Rory Stewart?

  I, I was born in, I was born in Hong Kong, right? So this is the beginning of something that is unbelievable, right? And this connects the AFD, where they're talking about throwing out German citizens who've broken the law, or remigration, all this sort of stuff. If we no longer have an idea of equal citizenship, and presumably Zia Yousaf has less of a problem with the fact that I wasn't born in Britain than he has with the fact that a Somali wasn't born in Britain.

• 49:29Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 49:30Rory Stewart?

  So, so that maybe is a more fundamental norm, because in that is citizenship, equality, justice, and everything that we stand for as a society. You get to choose who is and isn't British, not based on whether or not they have a British passport, but based presumably in this case on their skin colour.

• 49:46Alastair Campbell?

  I think the selection is happening in the next 48 hours, so this may be out of date, but just to say something about Sigal Abdul Ali, who's the council leader, I've known her and her family for 30 years. She is absolutely brilliant. Following Georgia Gould as council leader was a very, very tough act to follow, but she's really, really good and would be a terrific MP. But I think you're absolutely right. What he did was he posted a picture, she wears a headscarf, she is a Muslim, and basically said she's not born in Britain and therefore she shouldn't be replacing Keir Starmer. It's straightforward racism, which he probably thinks he gets away with more than maybe Farage or Kruger or Orr.

• 50:27Rory Stewart?

  Which he gets away with because he's a Sri Lankan Muslim.

• 50:29Alastair Campbell?

  Correct, correct. The other thing, it just shows you, we talk about normalisation, the other thing that's been big on the news this week was these thugs, people who say that women shouldn't be allowed to wear a burka, dressing up in balaclavas, dressed in black, trying to shut down two ports. These would be the same people who would celebrate the fact that Just Stop Oil people, who did similar things, are now serving jail sentences. And, and again, the media are very, very happy to say the AFD are hard-right. They call these people protesters. They are hard-right, most of them with criminal convictions, a lot of it for domestic violence, a lot of them, and I, they take their balaclavas off, let's see all their faces, and let's see how many of them already got convictions.

• 51:13Alastair Campbell?

  And we talk about them as anti-migration protesters. I suspect that a lot of them would be pretty experienced football thugs who just want to bundle and who just want to sort of play into this Tommy Robinson sort of fascist stuff. And, you know, you talk about joining the dots, that is what we have to be much more open about. They are not protesters. They are far-right thugs who are trying to stop any sort of debate around this, other than the one they want, which is all immigrants are bad.

• 51:42Rory Stewart?

  Let, let's finish you on Germany, which, which we started on and which you, you think about a lot. The AFD won the election, so that represents a far-right party with fascist associations getting well into the 40s percent in this election. We've got a very, very weak Chancellor now in Germany, who are, the person, the journalist we were interviewing was saying, maybe on their way out. We've got a whole conversation about Ukraine and the future of the European Union and the Middle Powers. How do we put that all together? Are you worried about Germany? Am I overdoing it in saying that this is, that, that this is something we need to worry about, not just ideologically or for Germany, but actually for the whole of Europe?

• 52:22Alastair Campbell?

  Look, if you, if you now have, as, as Paul was saying, not long ago, people were saying, well, listen, don't worry about the AFD, yeah, they're a bit of a irritant, they're a bit of a nightmare, but, you know, they're never going to get power. And look, Saxony Anhalt is, is the oldest, it's probably the most right-wing already of all the 16 Lender. So I think maybe a better, when we see the, the one in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, but I suspect what will happen is that, that, you know, they will get momentum out of this. And the other thing we should worry about, if you remember the Le Pen trying to become President of France, she, she's been beaten most times because in the second round, people have come out to stop her.

• 53:02Alastair Campbell?

  This election in Saxony Anhalt had the highest turnout there has been in a regional election for a very long time, it was almost 80%. And the people who were coming out to vote for the first time, including a lot of young people, massive numbers of blue collar workers, were coming out and saying, I've never voted before, I'm voting with the AFD. And it's the point that Paul made, it's not that they necessarily know or much care what they stand for, they just are fed up with the other two parties. And of course, one of the reasons they're fed up with the other two parties, because this is the electoral system they've got, is that they had to build a coalition. One of the reasons Meats can't get the reforms through that he promised is because he's, he's got the social democrats saying, no, we don't want that, they're having to do deals all the time.

• 53:44Alastair Campbell?

  So, look, I think it is deeply worrying, I think it's deeply worrying that the polls suggest, I still think Le Pen and Bardella are beatable, but the polls suggest they are in a very, very strong position, because we don't yet know who they would face, who replaces Macron for the centre, who stands on the left, we don't know yet. We know some of the ones who will definitely stand, but we don't know the whole picture. If you have a France that goes to the hard-right, we've already got Maloney, who, okay, Maloney's trimmed quite a lot, but would the French trim in the same way? Not so sure. And as, and as Paul said, the AFD are even further to the right of Le Pen. And the other big worry I have, because I remain convinced that even despite all this,

• 54:26Alastair Campbell?

  in fact, partly because of this hard-right populism in Europe, we need to get Britain back. And of course, that argument becomes a lot harder if you've got Le Pen and you've got vital, sort of, you know, taking power there. So I think we should be worried. And one of the terrifying things in Paul's documentary was the extent to which people just, they just ran this line the whole time, this is nicht unsere Krieg, it's not our war, this is not our war. Well, you might not think it is, but it could quite easily become yours. And that's why we have to understand what Ukraine are doing, it's standing up for all of us. And that's what we'll talk about in Question Time.