UK Brexit champion Nigel Farage to address far-right rally in Germany

Former UKIP leader Nigel Farage will appear at a rally held by Germany’s far-right party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) inside a renaissance fortress in Berlin on Friday.

The South East England MEP, who championed the Brexit cause, will appear at the Spandau Citadel in the west of the German capital to talk about “developments in the European Union, Brexit, direct democracy” and “how to make the impossible possible”, according to AfD MEP Beatrix von Storch, who is hosting the event.

A granddaughter of Hitler’s finance minister, Lutz von Krosigk, von Storch is a leading member of the anti-immigrant party, which has realistic aspirations to enter Germany’s parliament for the first time in federal elections on September 24.

Von Storch has been a member of Farage’s group in the European parliament since being expelled from the more mainstream European Conservatives and Reformists Group in April last year, following comments in which she called on European border guards to use firearms to deter illegal immigrants, including women and children. She later described the comments as a “tactical mistake”.

In her Facebook post, von Storch said that Farage had been so impressed with the AfD’s campaign that he had accepted “without hesitation” her invitation to appear at a campaign rally.

Protesters are planning to organise a counter-rally outside the Spandau Citadel while Farage is giving his speech, though by Thursday afternoon no official demonstration had yet been registered with Berlin police.