Germany's far-right AfD wins state election

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1:39Welcome to NewsHour, live from the BBC in London. I'm Gary O'Donoghue. We begin with what could be an immensely significant political moment for post-war Germany.

1:57That's the sound of supporters of the far-right AFD celebrating a landslide election victory in the former East German state of Saxony, Anhalt. It was the biggest win for the far-right in Germany since the Nazi era. The party more than doubled its support, taking around 44 % of the vote, though it fell just short of a majority of seats in the state parliament. It was a very bad result for the German Chancellor Friedrich Mertz and his centre-right CDU party saw its vote halved. Speaking through an interpreter in the past couple of hours, he said the result had shaken his party to the core. We are all deeply shocked.

2:41We didn't expect it like this and in this way. Obviously we need to accept it. these are the rules of our democracy. And yet, yesterday, signalled a change not just in Saxony and now, but in the whole of Germany. So what happens next? Our Europe correspondent Jessica Parker is in Saxony-Anhalt's capital, Magdeburg. Maybe we're going to see some protracted behind the doors negotiations is could they enter into what's known as a sort of tolerance deal, a bit confidence and supply deal with a smaller party called BSW, which doesn't sign up to the firewall, whereby other parties won't work with Alternativa for Deutschland, won't allow them to go into power if possible.

3:28Another option maybe is a very messy minority-led coalition by the Conservative CDU party. But of course, they had a terrible night. So there are, I think, now difficulties in figuring out who's going to actually form a government here in Saxony and and how I run local services like schools, like policing, like culture, the sorts of things the state government has control over. But while people will be keeping an eye on that, I think you can't lose sight of the fact this is a record result for Alternativa for Deutschland, a party that inspires passionate support. And as well, I think for Germany, some people openly compare Alternativa for Deutschland to the Nazi party.

4:10Now, this is a characterisation the AfD absolutely rejects, but I think the rise of the far right in Germany, people always talk about how Germany has this particular history, its dark past, and for some people this is a turning point that they are potentially very worried about. Our Europe correspondent Jessica Parker. With the AFD falling just short of the number of seats for an outright majority, it will now have to try to negotiate a way of getting its leader elected a state premier in order to form a government. That will be tricky since most mainstream parties in Germany refuse to cooperate with the AFD.

4:51And the political maths involved here mean that it would require all the other parties to get together to reach a majority, and that would create some very awkward and incompatible bedfellows. Ultimately, there could be fresh elections, which would give the AFD a shot at getting that outright majority. Well, earlier, my colleague Andrew Peach spoke to the German Member of Parliament and Deputy Leader of the AFD, Beatrice von Storck. How does she explain the result? Because people want to shift their politics. They are fed up with the direction we are working towards and they want something else.

5:30We are only short by three seats for the absolute majority of the seats And this shows what's going on, not only in this region of Germany, it's starting off in all of the rest of Germany as well. When you say people want something different, what is it they want that you're offering? We are offering to stop mass migration. We are offering to stop adapting our country to Islam majorities. We do not want to spend our money in the world, but do not have money for our own people. We do not want to pay for Ukraine for the wars with what we don't have for our own people. And of course, people are just tired of this leftist-focused social politics.

6:11So we gain support in all those areas. And when it comes to competencies, we are leading all the polls. So it's not only for migration politics that people think we are the most competent. It's also on economics and all the other areas. And even if you end up running Saxony-Anhalt, and that is still an if at this stage, even though you've got the largest number of votes, what difference can you make to any of those things? You can't run the German economy. You can't even dictate German migration policy. This is the beginning. We will have another regional elections in two weeks. And then there will be a huge debate about Mertz, our chancellor.

6:49This is already starting off whether he can run the country any longer or not, because they realise that their numbers are breaking apart. So yes, of course, Saxony Anhalt is not all of Germany, but it's the beginning. One or two, I get us down and stop us from existing as a party. And now we are talking about taking over a regional government. We are only short by three seats. And again, if the CDU tries to run the country against the will of the people, they will lose in the next election and the next. But you'll know that, Eynad, there are examples elsewhere. France is an obvious one, but there are others from elsewhere in the world whereby if other parties decide that their priority is to shut you out, they can do it unless you have a majority and you don't have a majority.

7:34So the other parties could all choose to work together and leave you out of government, even in the region, let alone more widely. What the other countries show, France, you just mentioned, and even UK and Italy, is that the conservative parties who used to run their countries, they disappear completely. if they stop listening to the people. And this is what we offer. We're listening to the people. And then secondly, then we go into a debate and then we'll see what's up for compromise. The Chancellor's Party, CDU, want to stay into power in this region where they just lost the elections. They have to go into coalition with the far-left party.

8:13And they're very famous at the very moment in Germany because they're openly basically supported by Islamists. They are chanting yalla, yalla, intifada at their campaign races. It's an open problem. The CDU goes into compromise with them. They will certainly lose. People will have heard you say that. You're talking a lot about your opponents having just won the election. Victoria is the largest party in the election yourself. I've got one final question for you, Beatrix, and it's this. Obviously, we're on the BBC World Service. You're broadcasting to people far beyond Germany. Some of them will be alarmed to turn on the radio today and hear that Germans have elected a far-right party for the first time since the Second World War.

8:56What can you say to reassure people listening in other countries? When it comes to labelling us as far-right, it's because we want to stop mass migration and the Islamisation of our country. This is what we do not want. And this is backed by almost the majority in this state where we just had the election. and this is supported also by the majority of the voters of the other parties. So I think one should stop labelling us and start talking with us and then change the direction politics is heading towards and then we will see solutions. Beatrix von Storck speaking to my colleague Andrew Peach a little earlier.

9:31The CDU saw its support in Saxony-Anhalt crater in yesterday's elections. It's been the dominant party in the state since German reunification. but it maintains its firewall or Brandmauer around preventing it from cooperating with the AFD. And it's looking increasingly likely that it will not be able to form an administration, even with the support from all the other parties. Jürgen Hart is a CDU member of the German parliament or Bundestag. He's also a spokesman on foreign policy. I asked him why his party had done so badly. I think the election in Saxony-Anhalt was very much stimulated by a contest between the two candidates.

10:18There was a very young and charismatic AfD leader who is not typical for AfD politicians, but typical for East German political approach and behavior. And I think he performed very well. And on the other hand, I think the voters in Saxony Anhalt also wants to show a signal to the federal politics that something needs to be changed. I mean, it's a hell of a signal, isn't it? I mean, your vote was more than halved. They doubled their support. This is an earthquake in German politics, more than a signal. It was a shocking result. I expected and we all expected that AfD will perform well in these elections, maybe coming close to an absolute majority in the parliament.

11:08But the drop of votes for CDU is the alarming signal. But to be frank, Saxony-Anhalt is a state with about two million inhabitants. We had elections in spring in Germany, in Baden-Württemberg and in Rheinland-Pallatine, where in both countries CDU performed very well. In Rheinland-Pallatine, we won the election and now having the prime minister. And in Baden-Württemberg, we are eye to eye to the governing party, Green Party in a coalition. and the mind and mood on Friedrich Merz and on the federal policy of CDU was not significantly better in spring than it did now. Therefore, no reason for panning, but we have to think about our performance and we have to think about our communication to the people, especially in East Germany.

12:00So it sounds like you're accepting that one way or another, the AFD, a far-right party, will control one of the lender shortly, for the first time since the Second World War? This is something as a result of elections in Germany. I have not to criticize the voters. I fear and I'm sure that most of those who vote for AFD last Sunday will not do it again in the next subsequent state elections and hopefully also not on federal elections. But up to today, I expect that Sigmund might become prime minister and then he has to show what he is able to do up to today. It's all the lip service and most of that what he promises to do is not possible for him to do due to legal restrictions and due to factic impossibilities.

12:57And therefore I think this potentially can be an eye-opener for all those who believe that AFD can change something or is a better alternative to show them that AFD is not good for Germany and not good for a state like Saxony Anhalt. Is it now time for the CDU to consider Friedrich Merz's leadership? I think not, because we have a chancellor elected by a coalition. It's totally unlikely to change the political leadership in a period of legislature. I think we have to work hard on our performance. This includes also the performance of the chancellor. But at the end of the year, people will see that this government is much better than its image.

13:47And I expect that end of the year, polls are better than now. And I also expect that social Democrats will keep the post of the prime minister in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern in two weeks. And I also hope that CDU in Berlin will come out as the strongest party. And that was Jürgen Hart, a CDU member of the Bundestag, the German parliament, speaking to me a little earlier. You're listening to NewsHour from the BBC World Service.

14:34Coming up, the meteorologist who persuaded Allied leaders to change the date of D-Day landings in 1944. The atmosphere was almost unbearably tense. An irrevocable decision had to be made. I had long had at the back of my mind the tactical use of weather. I had hoped that just such a set of circumstances would come about. A new film about him is out. We'll hear more about that in five minutes' time. But a reminder of our main news today. Chancellor Mertz says that the AFD's decisive victory in state elections in East Germany, Eastern Germany, has taken his Conservative CDU, shaken it to the core, signalling the need for a major reckoning.

15:17And President Zelensky says his talks with Donald Trump's envoys centred on air defences.

15:32You're listening to NewsHour from the BBC World Service with me, Gary O'Donoghue. Now, Australia was the first country to introduce a ban on social media for the under-16s. Now the government is planning to go further. Draft legislation expected this week will give Australians the option of switching off the algorithms that decides what appears in their social media feeds, while placing new restrictions, new responsibilities on the tech companies to tackle harmful content. Ministers say it's about giving users more control and creating a digital duty of care. So how would it work in practice, and would it make social media any safer?

16:20I've been speaking to Kate Manel. She's a research fellow in digital childhoods at Deakin University in Melbourne. I asked her how the new rules were expected to work. We don't have a huge amount of detail yet. Within this digital duty of care, one of the specific mechanisms that the government is saying will be included is this ability to opt out of recommendation algorithms. They haven't said exactly specifically what harms they're trying to target by introducing this, but reading between the lines of their comments and the motivations behind it, it appears that the idea is that you would, because you're not being recommended content, you might be less likely to be recommended harmful content.

17:07So it appears to be part of this ambition to make platforms more responsible for harmful content. And by turning off recommendation algorithms, the idea seems to be that you might be less likely to be recommended harmful content. What if there's a logical problem there? Because even if it's random, it could still be harmful, I guess. Yeah, well, so what they're proposing that you would get if you opted out of the recommended content algorithm is that you would essentially get a feed of content that is chronological and is just content from people who you have chosen to follow. So it wouldn't be promoting content from accounts that you don't follow, which at the moment we get a lot of, and it wouldn't be optimized for engagement.

17:57Having said that, yes, your point still stands because, of course, the people you follow might post harmful content. So it's certainly not as simple as perhaps the government is currently making it out to be. This would undermine the company's sort of raison d 'etre, wouldn't it? I mean, part of the way they make their money is using these algorithms to recommend other stuff to you and advertising and things like that. Yeah, absolutely. And particularly the way that they have been optimized for engagement, you know, to try to show you content that is most likely to keep you on the platforms. So in moving away from or giving people an option to opt out of that algorithm, it would really be kind of going to the heart of their current business models.

18:44Yes, absolutely. Which means they're going to resist it, right? Presumably, yes, I would say so. I mean, having said that, the settlement that they've just agreed to with the lawsuit in the US, apparently as part of the conditions of that settlement, they have agreed to give young users the ability to opt out of recommendation, personalized feeds. So perhaps there is a kind of writing on the wall around this anyway, and maybe there's a cumulative pressure there. I'm not sure. It's hard to say exactly how they'll respond, but there's growing pressure, I guess, around their business models anyway.

19:24I guess some people might say, look, you know, algorithms aren't always bad. Sometimes they bring you stuff you want and it doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be harmful, but it does target you and you don't have to waste your time scrolling through stacks of stuff that you're not interested in. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, algorithms help us to find content that we're interested in. People find them really useful a lot of the time. Also, a lot of businesses rely on the visibility that they get through these kinds of recommendation algorithms. So one possibility is that people won't choose to opt out of them because actually they find them really useful.

20:02So perhaps it might be more helpful to not just think about a kind of on or off system, but actually asking more questions around, you know, what kinds of algorithms and can people perhaps have more choice around the types of recommendation algorithms on their platforms. And that was Kate Manel speaking to me a little earlier from Deakin University in Melbourne. Now, if there's one thing that unites the British, it's talking about the weather. This week sees a new film about what was perhaps the most important weather forecast in British history, the one that gave the go-ahead for the D-Day Normandy landings on 6th June 1944.

20:43The extraordinary story behind it and that event, and the man on whose shoulders it fell, James Stagg, has been turned into a movie starring Andrew Scott. David Sillito went to meet him. Fate of the war, thousands of lives hinge on this. It's a film about D-Day, but more specifically, one man's contribution. The atmosphere was almost unbearably tense. An irrevocable decision had to be made. This is the voice of James Stack. I had long had at the back of my mind the tactical use of weather. I had hoped that just such a set of circumstances would come about... D-Day should have been on the 5th of June.

21:26James Stagg, an RAF meteorologist, told General Eisenhower to postpone the invasion. I need a forecast. If you invade tomorrow, they're going to be washed away. There's a reason this film is called Pressure. Why should I trust you? We must face the vats! The vats! However frightening they may be! 82 years on, I met Andrew Scott, the man now playing James Stagg. He appeared to me to be an extraordinarily interesting cinematic character as well as an unsung hero from history. I really enjoyed the way that he was not interested in ingratiating himself with anybody. He's a bit chilly. He's chilly.

22:09He's definitely very chilly and very forthright and very direct and completely obsessed with the weather and not afraid to speak truth to power. It's almost impossible to understand the level of jeopardy one man is under. Oh, absolutely. The stakes were so enormously high. It's wonderful that we can pay tribute to him in this way all these years later. 80 years later, suddenly. Yeah, there he is. He's a movie hero. Exactly. I don't think he'd have enjoyed that very much. I tried not to be afraid of the fact that perhaps at the beginning the audience might be like, who is this guy? And hopefully by the end we understand his motivations and his inner workings.

22:52What do you make of Stagg? Churchill says he's a genius. Men are too fond of that word. James Stagg's warning to the man in charge, General Eisenhower, saved the day. But it wasn't what Eisenhower wanted to hear. Speaking truth to power is a big thing in this, isn't it? Yes, yeah, huge, huge, huge thing. might be a thing to take on board today. Well, that's exactly right. That's exactly right. And a celebration of experts. Yeah. And talking of experts, the film features archive material and employed a number of researchers, one of whom happened to have a familiar name. So some people were employed to sort through this archival footage and somebody came in and his name was Stagg and had no idea what the nature of the movie was.

23:40and he said, that's my grandfather. So completely serendipitously... He didn't know? He didn't know. You were doing research that worked towards the movie? Yes, yeah. Completely wonderful. There's something in the air there, isn't there? Something is in the air. So, yeah, that was really wonderful. While civilian Britain sleeps, history's greatest story is being written. And at the end, when D-Day succeeded, because of that prediction of a brief break in the weather, it was all over, a brief but intense moment in an epic struggle. Now the world of free men strikes in all its assembled might at the weakening chains of bondage.

24:20And David Sillito was talking to Andrew Scott about his new film Pressure, about the D-Day landings.

24:31You're listening to NewsHour with me, Gary O'Donoghue.

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25:27now in ukraine kiev is suffering more daily air raid alerts than at any time since the russian full-scale invasion in 2022 that's according to bbc verify analysis of government figures there was a brief pause in attacks over the weekend while u.s envoys were in the ukrainian capital. But in recent weeks, Russia's round-the-clock attacks with new, faster drones have forced people to head for the shelters many, many times a day. Our diplomatic correspondent James Landau reports from Kyiv. We've come to the scene of another strike right in the heart of Kyiv. And it's a familiar scene, a building smoking as the fire caused by what we think was a drone.