German far-right set for big win in east

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1:12Hello, welcome to NewsHour. It's coming to you live from the BBC in London. I'm Tim Franks and we're beginning in Germany, in the east of Germany, in the state of Saxony-Anhalt, which has today delivered a huge jolt to the country's politics. Exit polls say that the far-right Alternative für Deutschland party has secured a landslide victory in today's regional elections, which news prompted roars and whoops of delight at Party HQ.

1:44The AfD is projected to have secured about 44 % of the vote, more than double what it got at the last election. And mirroring its triumph, Germany's main governing party, the centre-right CDU, EU saw its support crater to about 18%. The AFD says it has a mandate to govern, which were it to come to pass, would mean it would be the first far-right party to win control of a German state since the Second World War, since the time when the Nazis committed some of the worst crimes in the history of humanity. Our correspondent Jess Parker joins me now from the state capital Magdeburg. Jess, will it come to pass?

2:22What's it looking like tonight for the AFD? Well, it's still looking slightly uncertain. Forgive the echoey environment. I'm in a hotel hallway having rushed out of the AFD election night party earlier in order to be able to do some edits and talk to you. But it's at the moment, all eyes are on whether the smaller party, BSW or BSV, as it's known here, whether it's going to reach the 5 % threshold that could allow it to get into Parliament. The reason that's important is BSV have signalled that they would maybe be open to helping the AFT actually take power in this state, even if it wouldn't be any kind of formal coalition.

3:07if the BSV didn't make into the parliament the AFD would potentially get more seats more likely to get state level power so still some convoluted German political maths going on here but the big picture is they've won in terms of voter share the AFD big they've won and they've won big here in Saxony and in terms of both the state I mean obviously states in in Germany have a considerable amount power, not unfettered power. So that could be important. But nationally, what does this huge victory for the AFD mean, do you think? Nationally, I think it means the AFD feels they're on the march and they have been growing in popularity.

3:47They're leading the polls nationally, even though their support is heavily skewed to eastern Germany. I think as well, it's a bad night for Friedrich Mertz, the chancellor, CDU, who was already very embattled, but this could potentially further destabilize him and his government. Now, remember, his government is, for example, a key supporter of Ukraine, whereas the alternative for Deutschland want to end support to Ukraine and have pro-Russia policies. Now, as you say, important to understand states, they don't set foreign policy state governments, but they do run things like education, policing, culture.

4:23So as well, I think for the AFD, they see this as a potential blueprint for how they would look in power in other states or indeed nationally, something that they aspire to. So they're seeing it as a stepping stone for their aspirations, whereas other people, I think, critics of the EFD, of which there are many in Germany, this is a party classed as right-wing extremist in this state by domestic intelligence, critics of the party fear this is a moment of peril for the country if indeed there is some kind of domino effect. Jess Parker, our correspondent in Magdeburg, in the state capital of Saxony-Anhalt.

4:57Thank you very much. Well, let's hear from the victors now. Christine Anderson is a member of the European Parliament with the AFD. As things stand, how certain is she that they will be able to take power in Saxony-Anhalt? As the ex-fult showed, we missed the absolute majority by like one seat. And as the evening will progress and more votes will come in, it will most likely even drop a little. However, no matter what the other parties do, it kind of depends on whether a party that is called BSW will make it. That is not quite clear yet. But the other three parties that did make it into parliament, it's not enough for them to secure a majority.

5:43and even if the fourth party, the BSW, will make it, it's still not going to be enough. So they will have to speak to us to get a government going. OK, but just to be clear, if this left-wing anti-immigration BSW party does pass, the 5 % threshold is represented in the parliament, you would be happy to go into coalition with them? We would more likely or would like to go into a coalition with the Christian Democrats, the former Conservative Party. But if the BSW is a communist party, let's face it. But if they said that they want to clean up all the mess that the established parties created, yes, we would absolutely speak with them.

6:33And I hear what you're saying about the Christian Democrats. I have to say, after speaking to you, we're going to be running an interview I did with a senior member of the Christian Democrats, where I asked him about the possibility of at last ending this firewall against the AFD. he said that it would be appalling because he feels that the AFD, you are on the far right of politics. You stand for things which, frankly, appall him and actually aren't just wrong. They are dangerous. So it seems as if the CDU has absolutely no intention of going into coalition. Well, the truth is the positions we hold as AFD are exactly the positions that the Christian Democrats held within the 2000s.

7:24Christine, sorry to interrupt, but I mean, they did not adopt a policy of remigration, of essentially forced deportation. They didn't talk about trying to get rid of people in Germany whom they deem somehow to be culturally incompatible. But that's what they advocated for. And that's what the chancellor, Mertz, ran on, that he wanted to expel illegal migrants. Lots of countries want to expel illegal migrants, but this is far, far broader than that. No, no, it's actually not. Listen to how they campaign. They know all the right things to say. And once they are elected, they have a whole entire different tune.

8:04We stood by what we said for over 10 years now, and we were proven to be right. I mean, look at the results in Saxony Anhal today, 44%. What more do you need? We strike a chord with the people, and that's what they want. One of the other objections that is made, part of it, is that actually your language, Your policy stances are seen as being extreme right, that you haven't really distanced yourself from people who are out and out neo-Nazis. We are not extreme right. We have just been extremely right so far. The other part of this is about your party's stance on Russia. And the chap who wrote the manifesto for Saxony-Anhalt, Hans-Thomas Tilschneider, he attended a celebration of Vladimir Putin's birthday at the Russian embassy in Berlin last year.

9:01Is this really the sort of behaviour that you think Germans should be reassured by, especially when you're coming under drone attack? Our state interest, of course, entails that we have to secure power for our country. We are an exporting nation and we depend on energy. And Russia has been able to supply us with that energy. So you have to differentiate between, you know, our national interest in terms of securing our power and what Russia is doing right now. Christine Anderson, member of the European Parliament with the Alternative für Deutschland. Sorry about the line quality there. She was speaking to us from a moving car.

9:47She wasn't driving, I can reassure you. But let's go from the victors to the vanquished. Michael Gala is also a member of the European Parliament, but with the centre-right CDU, whose leader Friedrich Mertz, as we heard from Jessica Parker, our correspondent, is Chancellor of Germany. How bruising has today been? Well, it's an unprecedented result at the lender level. It is outrageous for my party. We were cut in half from 37 to 18.5 around, and the AFD has got around 44%. One seat as it stands now, one seat short of an outright majority. The evening is not over yet. We will see how it ends. It may well be an outright majority or an alternative would be then that all other parties, including the left party, would have to join forces in order to get the outright majority and keep an acting prime minister of the CDU in charge.

10:50Your chancellor, well, Germany's chancellor, but the man who's at the top of your party, Friedrich Merz, came to power promising that he wouldn't just beat back the AfD, he would halve their support. The people whose support halved, as you've already pointed out, were your party. Can Merz survive? I think so. Sachsen-Anhalt is not representative for Germany. It's around 2 million people, less than 2 million voters, although we had now 80 % turnout. Do you not think that there may well be some people within your party who will see these results tonight and think, you know, is the brand now is the firewall which prevents you and other mainstream parties from even thinking about going into coalition with the AFD?

11:46is it really the right thing to to carry on because i mean you may say that look you disagree with lots and lots of afd policies but if they win a crushing victory isn't there something firstly slightly anti-democratic about saying we're going to do all we can even going into coalition with people on the left who we really have got very little in common with just to stop the afd i mean so there's the sort of the moral argument the principled argument but also it's just not working is it i mean you know the the the firewall it has been erected for years now and the afd is only gaining support yes and still uh it is very clear i mean the objective of the afd is is to destroy the christian democratic party our union and uh uh any attempt to seek common ground with them on the lender or the national level would split my party and would bring us really to the end.

12:50And that is nothing that can by any means be discussed. And insofar, we have our principles and if they get a majority, they shall rule and deliver or make their points, but not with us. And I don't see any responsible person in my party on the land for a state government or even the federal government level to work with a party that wants to destroy Europe, that is pro-Russian, and that is the biggest threat to our democracy. I mean, we are a country with a tragic history. And when you look at how the Nazis, prior to seizing power, held democratic institutions and politicians in contempt and compare that to the harsh wording on the present day, it is something that is truly frightening.

13:47And I think we will all work together that history doesn't repeat itself. And that was Michal Gala, member of the European Parliament, with the centre-right CDU on what has been a very tough night for the mainstream parties and a very big night for the far-right AFT.

14:09And coming up on the programme, the political philosopher Francis Fukuyama worries about the direction of democracy in America. J.D. Vance, our vice president, has been pushing this line about heritage Americans. If you can trace your ancestors back to at least the Civil War, that you're somehow more American. I think it's terrible. Donald Trump wants to upend the 14th Amendment and birthright citizenship. That affects me personally because my mother was in the United States on a student visa when she met my father at the University of Chicago and had me. And under those rules, I wouldn't be a citizen if those people had their way.

14:51That interview with Francis Fukuyama coming up in 30 minutes. And one headline story we'll be looking at in 15 minutes after meeting Donald Trump's peace envoys on their first official visit to Ukraine. and Vladimir Zelensky says he expects the war with Russia to continue into the winter. This is NewsHour. It's coming to you live from the BBC World Service. I'm Tim Franks. The FIFA president, Jani Infantino, has been the man running the world's favourite sport, football, since 2016. But ever since news came out after this year's World Cup that he planned to sell off stakes in FIFA competitions, a plan he had to abandon in the teeth of howls of outrage from large swathes of the sport.

15:32It's felt like every other headline about Infantino has included the word beleaguered. And yet, today FIFA announced that its president still intends to stand for re-election next March for a fourth term in office. Henry Winter is a veteran football journalist who writes now for the news website World Soccer. Is he surprised? Not in the least bit surprised because of his lack of self-awareness. And I also thought the moment that UEFA, the governing body of European football, effectively withdrew their boycott threat, their threat to not send European teams to FIFA events. I thought that that would embolden Infantino and also the legal action, threatening criminal action against him by UEFA and FIFA's quick response to that.

16:22And as we all know, legal work, particularly in football, can take a long time. I always thought that he would fancy himself to have another run at the office. And do you think he has the support? Because it's what, 211, something like that, member countries that belong to FIFA? He just needs a simple majority. Do you reckon he's got it? He's been working on it. And it's quite interesting that he is in Poland at the moment for the FIFA Women's Under-20 Championship. And he's been going around. Have you seen some of his quotes that have been appearing on FIFA websites? It's all about, oh, you know, it's fantastic here.

17:04He's an astute politician and he has been traveling around trying to shore up his power base. obviously he's got Africa, elements of Comodabool, which is Latin and South America. And I'm sure we'll see in the next few weeks confirmation that the 2030 World Cup, the next men's World Cup, will have 64 teams, which of course will win him even more support from countries around the world because everyone wants to get on board the World Cup gravy train. But given that European football's governing body, UEFA, has launched this legal action, And I know you say that, you know, it could take a long time for it to wend its way through the courts.

17:47Could member nations not think, gosh, do we really want more bad publicity over the next few years? I think some will see it just as Europe being a little bit arrogant. And you've got a lot of countries in Africa and parts of Asia who are saying, actually, what Infantina was proposing in terms of opening up the sell-off of parts of the World Cup, to investors, actually they would benefit from. I'm sure we're now going to see Infantino perhaps loosening the purse strings and dipping into FIFA's reservoir of revenue. They've got, you know, a couple of billion. And also with respect to UEFA, I mean, they are a governing body.

18:29They're not the FBI. You know, they're not Interpol. They can't really launch criminal action. Is there any chance that there could be a rival candidate found? It has to be done. The nominations have to be in by November the 18th. Montagliani, who is head of the CONCACAF, the North America, Caribbean and Central American Federation, he is the obvious candidate because you can't put up a European candidate because the rest of the world, they wouldn't take kindly to that. So the clock is running. So nominations by November the 18th. And then the vote is in Rabat in March the 18th. the football journalist Henry Wint

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20:09Welcome back to NewsHour. During the Second World War, suspicions ran high within countries that had been invaded by Nazi Germany, with locals keeping a watchful eye out for those who'd chosen to collaborate with the Nazis. Women across Europe who had relationships with Nazi soldiers were vilified and treated as outcasts. A new film, Woman Unknown, is set in Denmark after the war and tells the story of Marie, a young nanny and housemaid in Copenhagen who tries to keep such a relationship secret. The film has premiered tonight at the Venice Film Festival, and my colleague Julia Morica has been speaking ahead of that to its Danish-Egyptian director, May El-Touki.

20:47There was a lot of saved-up anger in the immediate aftermath after the Second World War in Europe, many places in Europe, and for Denmark specifically because we chose a politic of collaboration with the Germans to avoid too many casualties. opportunities it's understandable that you would get angry at people collaborating at the same time that was the official politic of the country so that makes it a messy matter to tell a story about and therefore for me more exciting because there's something to debate and talk about. Because people felt correct me if I'm wrong that those women by doing what they did had effectively gone against their national identity at a time when that mattered so much to people.

21:31Yeah. And so they were actually called horizontal collaborators by some in wartime and in post-war. The female body has always been regarded as part of the kind of national identity, national territory. And that's also what the film is about, basically, the female body as a battleground and what that means in a private setting and what that means in a public setting. And I talked to a historian at some point who had been helping me out, and we talked about the concept that men often pay with their lives during war and women pay with their bodies. And sometimes these people, I mean, they were hunted down, weren't they, for what they had done?

22:10Yes, and quite violently, they were shamed in the street, humiliated, spat on. You would cut their hair. And then given that time where migration wasn't as common as it is today, people didn't necessarily leave their hometown. So often these women would live in that town that had shamed them and their children would suffer as well. So what we see now is the grandchildren of these women who are starting to, you know, share their stories about their parents who were born out of these relationships. Which is fascinating. I mean, I was going to take the conversation to the present day and you've gone there before I did.

22:50And I wonder what kind of emotions those grandchildren were expressing now that they knew the stories of their grandmothers. I think they look at their grandmothers with a more sympathetic, gracious gaze and with more nuance. I think there is an opportunity now to tell stories about that time where we can maybe be more nuanced in order to reflect on what went down and also, to some extent, talk about how can we deal with future conflicts of that sort. May Altuhi, director of Woman Unknown, and she was speaking to Julian Morica.

23:38This is NewsHour, coming to you live from the BBC World Service with me, Tim Franks. Today saw a first in the war between Russia and Ukraine. It was the first time that President Trump's top envoy, Steve Wyckoff and Jared Kushner, had travelled to Kiev since Russia's full-scale invasion. Their visit came the day after seeing Vladimir Putin in Moscow, a trip that they'd made several times before. Mr. Wyckoff pronounced himself encouraged out of today's talks with Vladimir Zelensky. Mr. Kushner adopted a rather more neutral tone. You never know with any deal, right? So it's not done till it's done and it could happen quickly.

24:15It could happen slowly. And I think if we can achieve that, it'd be an incredible thing. It doesn't mean that we will achieve it, but it's an effort that's very important to try. And so we're going to continue to do it. And as for President Zelensky, he thanked the US envoys for coming, but he also made his familiar plea of a peace buttressed by security guarantees.

24:42We're all on the same side, and we want the war to be over. We want the suffering to stop. And we want this war to finish in a just manner, and in a way that there will be no new aggression from Russia. And the Ukrainian president warned his compatriots that the war will in all likelihood extend into a long, hard winter, another long, hard winter. Andrew Kramer is Kiev bureau chief for the New York Times and joins me live very late at night from the Ukrainian capital, for which thank you, Andrew. Do you know, have you been given any insight into why Witkopf and Kushner decided that this was going to be an invitation that they would accept?

25:23Well, thank you very much for having me on. This visit had been rumored about for months, and the expectation in Ukraine was that they would visit even back in the spring. One possible explanation is the coming midterm elections in the United States. Their visit highlights the Trump administration's diplomacy. So the timing politically works. And I last week spoke with the chief negotiator on the Ukrainian side who said that only a confluence of political, military and economic circumstances will actually lead to a peace agreement. So we have in this case the U.S. politics aligning as well with these peace talks.

26:09There have been reports. I mean, I've only seen them on the AFP news agency, but the Ukrainian or a Ukrainian presidential official has said that the envoys brought new, more effective proposals with them. I mean, I guess this could just be a sort of diplomatic niceties. But do you think there is any evidence of sort of fresh thinking or breakthroughs? well certainly president trump has has said this and the ukrainians have also said there are new ideas on the table we have not so far learned the details of what those might be the most important question is control of territory in eastern ukraine and the compromises discussed last february were not acceptable and we have yet to learn what what might work.

27:02And all this comes against a backdrop where, I mean, it feels as if the front lines may not be changing hugely, but the war is escalating. I mean, I'm sure that you and Kiev feel it very strongly. And also, Ukraine has its own long range strikes into Russia. It doesn't feel like it's a sort of particularly propitious moment for there to be talked about peace. Well, that's certainly the case. One of the questions that was posed to Mr. Whitkoff when he arrived was whether he indeed thought that Putin wanted peace because the airport, which he was considering flying to, according to Ukrainian officials, had been hit by a Russian ballistic missile last night, even after a ceasefire was expected to be in place.

27:49So there have been no real signs of a letup. And in fact, quite the opposite. Here in Kiev, It's been a nonstop cacophony of drone attacks from Russia over the past week or so before the arrival of these invoices. And given the dearth of these interceptor missiles that Ukraine has been desperately asking for to try and shoot down the ballistic and the cruise missiles, I presume, Andrew, the people in Kiev that you talk to, I mean, you know, I'm sure lots of people say we're resolute, but they must be fearful about what the winter will hold for them. That's certainly the case. Everybody's very worried about the coming winter.