Haider Sheds Party and Porsche to Win Back Voters. But is He Too Late?

Sitting in a cafe at Vienna airport, Jörg Haider takes a sip from a can of Red Bull. It has been a hectic month for Mr Haider, one of Europe's more infamous far-right politicians.

Last month, after a bitter split with the Freedom party, the anti-immigrant movement he led until five years ago, he launched his own party - the Alliance for the Future of Austria (Bündnis Zukunft Österreich or BZÖ).

His former party won 27% of the vote in 1999. It joined Austria's coalition government the following year in a move that shocked Europe and prompted the EU to impose sanctions on Austria. Mr Haider later resigned as party leader, a decision he now regrets.

"It was a mistake. It is important for someone who leads a party to have a vision," he said. "Many of our supporters have become non-voters. We need to win them back."

Mr Haider's latest comeback follows embarrassing defeats for the Freedom party. Yesterday, Mr Haider said he had broken with the party because of "fundamental differences" with some colleagues. Either way, the move left the conservative chancellor, Wolfgang Schüssel, with a tiny majority.

The Freedom party was a junior partner in Mr Schüssel's coalition; the BZÖ has now taken its place, and a handful of disgruntled Freedom party MPs who have refused to join Mr Haider could now plunge Austria into early elections, or bring down the government during Austria's presidency of the EU next year. He remains governor of Carinthia, Austria's southern region, winning re-election last year.

In his latest political incarnation Mr Haider has stolen many themes that now pre-occupy the European left - anti-globalisation, scepticism about the new EU constitution, and anxiety over the effect on jobs of low-wage migrant workers from eastern Europe. ("We are very critical of globalisation," he said.)

He has abandoned his earlier admiration for Tony Blair. "I don't like the way Blair increasingly resembles Margaret Thatcher," Mr Haider said. "He has too little sense of social responsibility. It would be unthinkable in Austria for someone to have to wait weeks for an operation, or to see a dentist, like you Brits do. If you like things that way, that's your problem."

Mr Haider is especially critical of Mr Blair's decision to invade Iraq. "Blair really was Bush's poodle. He went to war on totally false pretences."

Mr Haider doesn't have much time for George Bush, either: "He's a western fundamentalist. He doesn't have any respect for other cultures."

In 2002, Mr Haider also provoked controversy by visiting Saddam Hussein in Baghdad. He is convinced that with further negotiations Saddam - "a typical Arab despot" - could have been persuaded to make a "peaceful transition" to a "measured regime", a bit like Libya.

While in Baghdad, Mr Haider said he bumped into George Galloway - the new Respect MP for Bethnal Green and Bow. They met in the lobby of the Al-Rashid hotel. "Galloway came up to me and said: 'Hello, great to see you.' He shook my hand. I didn't know who he was," he recalled. "He told me he was a British MP."

Unlike Germany, Austria has never fully come to terms with its Nazi past, a factor that seems to explain Mr Haider's appeal.

Mr Haider has often given ambiguous encouragement, praising the Waffen SS during a notorious speech in the 1990s, as well as Hitler's employment policies.

Was Haider a Nazi? "I share the same destiny as the new Pope," he joked. "The British always make the mistake in moments of national emotion of insulting people as neo-Nazis. It's the same whether it's a football game or choosing a Pope. It doesn't apply."

Nevertheless, there are signs that Mr Haider's new party is suspiciously like his old one. Last month, Siegfried Kampl, a member of the BZÖ, and an MP in Austria's upper house, said Austrian Nazis had been "brutally persecuted" after the war.

Austrian deserters from the German army were part Kamaradenmörder ("comrade-murderers"), he said.

Mr Kampl's father was a Nazi party member who had been imprisoned by the British. Mr Haider refused to condemn his colleague and even expressed sympathy.

"You have to understand his personal history," he said. "He was a small child. His mother had died, his father was looking after the farm, and there were six children there. After the war the father was taken away, and the children were left on their own. History isn't black and white. It has many facets."

But Mr Haider said he was grateful to the British for sweeping into Carinthia in April 1945, just as Tito's communist partisans came in from the south. "We have to thank the British that we became a democratic country. Otherwise we would have been a communist land."

Born in the Upper Austrian town of Bad Goisern in 1950, his parents were both Nazis who had moved to Germany before Austria became part of the Third Reich, After the war, they were punished and forced to take up menial jobs. His father later joined the Freedom party. After school, Mr Haider studied law in Vienna, joining the Freedom party himself in 1976. He became leader in 1995.

Although the party suffered a series of heavy defeats without Mr Haider as leader, polls suggest his new BZÖ will attract only 5% of the vote. Some of Mr Haider's old Freedom party colleagues have refused to join the BZÖ, accusing its leader of treachery.

"We had fundamental differences of opinion. They didn't respect the government's programme any more."

What, then, is his ultimate ambition? Chancellor? "I don't want to have to wait forever like your Gordon Brown."

As well as dumping his old party, Mr Haider has also dumped its old colour, blue. The new colour is orange. Last year Mr Haider sold his trademark blue Porsche. He now drives round Klagenfurt, Carinthia's capital, in a VW.

The traditional Austrian costume has also gone; these days he looks more like an accountant, in charcoal suits and rimless glasses. Is this a more mature Mr Haider, perhaps?

"Every person learns from experience. I hope that I'm more mature than I used to be, and more visionary as well."

Wasn't he ever tempted to give up politics altogether and do something else? "I quite like the idea of being a professor. And there are some things in the world I would still like to see. I'm not showing any signs of being tired yet."

And with that it is time to catch his plane to Klagenfurt. But 10 minutes later his aide calls, flustered. The plane has left without Mr Haider. He arrived at the gate too late.