Austrian right-winger Jörg Haider and many of his supporters have announced that they have broken with the Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ) and founded the new political movement "Alliance for Austria's Future". The move left the FPÖ stripped of its moderate wing – now grouped around Haider and his sister Ursula, until now the official leader of the FPÖ – and in the hands of far-right members. The move signals Haider's desire to distance himself from his past as a rightist firebrand whose past campaign tactics occasionally included praising aspects of the Nazi era and appealing to Austrians' fear of foreigners. Those tactics helped power the Freedom Party into federal government just five years ago.
But it has since lost most of his support, limping along attracting only a fraction of its former popularity and prompting the populist Haider to reinvent himself as a man concerned less with ideology and more with issues. The new party would avoid "paying homage to ideological idols", Haider said. The Freedom Party remains the junior partner in the federal government coalition with the centrist People's Party. But Haider signaled the creation of the new party did not necessarily mean a government crisis, suggesting FPÖ ministers could leave their party to join the new Alliance, but remain part of the government.
