Helme has said that as early as November last year consideration had been given to removing Madison from EKRE's candidate list for the June European elections, but the party feared that this would be a hard sell for rank and file party members and voters.

In a long interview given to ERR, Helme said believes that the party should in fact have struck off Madison.

ERR: You have been a bit removed from public life lately. What have you been up to over the summer?

Madison: In general in Estonia people take vacations in summer. However, I wasn't able to in the month of July. In July, we had been dealing with various party matters. In August, indeed I have been resting.

Did you do this inside or outside Estonia?

I was for a while, yes, abroad.

EKRE isn't having the best time of it right now. Many people have left the party, and its rating has declined. How do you see the party's current situation?

I am certainly of a different opinion. Vice versa, we have good times. Yes, the fall in percentage was an inevitability at that moment when the party leadership essentially decided that we have to to get our ranks in order.

How can you head up a party, how can you lead EKRE, when it includes people who actually want to be in the Reform Party, the Center Party, or Isamaa? And who wants to be in such parties as Isamaa, the Center Party, or the Reform Party? You can't run a party in that way. Multiculturalism is bad both for society at large and also for one party. A party must still coalesce around a worldview.

Up to today, we have had a complete houseclean within the party, and our unified worldview has been consolidated anew. In this sense, I don't think things in our party are that bad, rather on the contrary, things in our party have been fundamentally put in order, and from here on in we can focus on messages and getting work done.

According to the latest Kantar Emor survey, EKRE's support has fallen to 10 percent. Is this concretely the result of this internal house clean?

The main reason indeed lies in these larger upheavals. However, this is not only within our party. If we look at the entire Estonian political landscape, then the entire political scene is in significant turmoil. In my view, what is happening now in Estonian politics is the crystallization of something we've been stressing for 10 years now: That there is essentially one large united party in Estonia, which might call itself the Social Democrats, Eesti 200, the Center Party, Parempoolsed, or something else.

Their switching between parties honestly doesn't raise any eyebrows. When people jump from one to another because, ultimately, they are all loyal to the same global liberal ideology. Some simply are better at hiding it than others.

On the other side of that dividing line, there's only one party, and that is the Conservative People's Party of Estonia (EKRE). This is a national, conservative, and sovereign-minded party.

The cleaning up that took place within our ranks involved those who wanted to be part of a unified party; these have now left us and are now trying to create another so-called ersatz conservative party in the unified party camp, to give the impression of diversity.

In actuality, this is a deception.

You are saying there is EKRE, then the dividing line, and then everyone else. Are you saying that EKRE has no allies, particularly when we come to talk about opposition activities?

There is certainly cooperation within the opposition, and this cooperation can be quite practical. An example from our recent past is the election of the Riigikogu Board, where an agreement was reached on which member of the opposition would be included. However, not all opposition parties contributed to this cooperation, yet there are certainly agreements being made within the opposition. These agreements tend to be more on an ad hoc basis.

We do not have any government responsibility, which means we do not have to make any compromises or give in to our partners' ideological views. We don't have such a need, we have the need to clearly communicate our message and to differentiate ourselves.

It is often heard that when people talk about opposition cooperation, they measure it by the same standards as coalition cooperation, but these are two fundamentally different things. The coalition must keep its majority votes together in order to implement its program. But we don't have a majority, so we cannot implement our platform in any case. Our main task is to clearly show what we would do differently, and better.

Do you see potential for opposition cooperation in the future, particularly with a new national conservative party emerging?

For a start, they need to survive or even being as it were to exist. That they've held a few meetings here and issued three press releases for each of them is all well and good during the slow news season. But there are several issues at stake here. I don't want to dwell on them too much because, in my opinion, they don't actually exist. Up until now, their raison d'etre, their reason for being, or their only real message has been to rain on EKRE's parade.

On this question, they don't stand out in the political landscape. Every media outlet in Estonia, every other political party in Estonia knows how to do this, and they do so every day. They also need to find a way to differentiate themselves via their message, but what that message is, no one has heard yet.

Another thing is that if they do in fact manage to secure a seat at some representative body, not just thanks to EKRE voters' support, but at actual elections, the political math always comes down to whether it's necessary to sit down at the negotiating table or not. But that is still a long way off.

When talking about the differences, the newly elected ERK chair Silver Kuusik has said they intend to avoid the kind of abrasive debate often associated with EKRE's style. One of the major distinctions they have also highlighted is their support for the idea of a progressive income tax.

I don't feel recognized as being especially affected when people bring up this matter of style. Every time when I ask these critics to provide me an example, as I want to understand what exactly this style is that they dislike so, they usually take a long time to come up with something. Then they bring up some comment or event from five or eight years ago, and that is as far as it goes.

If I compare myself with someone like Jürgen Ligi, who insults his female colleagues on a regular basis, or how Social Democrat Riina Sikkut pulled the middle finger to ministers, as an MP, there has been plenty such behavior in Estonian politics. yet for some reason, it's never a problem when others do it. I honestly don't understand what this style is meant to be.

And another thing: I must ask all those people who were influenced by Reform Party propaganda and who were programmed with a slogan, or conditioned like Pavlov's dogs, to vote for anyone, be it the Social Democrats, the Reform Party, or Eesti 200, just provided EKRE doesn't get into power. To all these people, please ask yourselves this: Is your life better now than it was when EKRE was in office? If it was better then, then then what is your problem? And if it wasn't, then they would likely be satisfied with their choices

So, this talk about style: When someone starts talking about style, they probably no longer have any real arguments left to criticize our positions or our actions in the government.

Our actions in office are a very good example of what we actually did. And we did good things: We reduced taxes, curbed immigration, helped the Estonian economy thrive, developed rural areas, supported agriculture, built roads, and much more.

If you didn't like all that and instead prefer what Kaja Kallas has done: Opening the borders and allowing 150,000 slavs into the country – according to the Police and Border Guard Board (PPA), as of August 18, there were 33,688 Ukrainian citizens with valid temporary protection residence permits, plus 6,022 Ukrainian citizens with valid international protection residence permits [in Estonia].

At the same time, the PPA lacks an overview of how many Ukrainians might have entered Estonia via the EU's internal borders. (Added for clarification – ed.). Those who have Russianized Estonia and hiked taxes with some new outrageous round each year can probably talk style, but for those who believe this has been a negative thing, it is worth asking whether the issue of style is even relevant at all here.

And how do you comment on the direction of the progressive income tax?

I want always to make it very clear to proponents or advocates of a progressive income tax that anyone who thinks others will be paying more with the introduction of a progressive tax is being deceived.

A progressive income tax is simply code for a tax hike. That much is absolutely clear. If someone talks about a progressive income tax, they're really talking about a tax rise for most people. And I do not support tax rises.

Returning briefly to the issue of ratings, Kantar Emor research expert Aivar Voog said that EKRE hasn't been active over the summer and consequently you've lost support. Last summer, you weren't very active either, and you lost support to Isamaa; now, some of that support has gone to this new party.

I can agree with that, only it hasn't been accidental. In reality, politics in Estonia is conducted when the Riigikogu is in session.

Of course, it's easier to make it into the news during the summer when it's pickle season and media outlets are hungry for any news.

But in truth, what gets written in the news over the summer or what happens during that period doesn't really matter very much. It's all just superficial noise.

What then is EKRE's specific plan for the upcoming Riigikogu session, when political life picks up more actively again? Dropping to 10 percent comes as quite a blow to you, considering that in better times it stood at well over 20 percent, even as much as 25 percent

I am not going to explain at length why I don't take all the polls seriously. We have had three different polls last week, but this week we got the Norstat one, which put us at 16 percent.

But polls vary, and the Emor survey shows a lot of fluctuation, with all the parties experiencing significant swings within the space of a month.

We shall see how it goes. I'm always more interested in trends than snapshots. I certainly won't let myself be swayed by a single figure.

I will also aske about former EKRE member Jaak Madison, who announced on Thursday that he is joining the Center Party. What are your thoughts on that development?

I generally don't like all these apologies you get in politics. This is a tactic often used by radical leftists, to create scandals out of thin air, forcing their political and ideological opponents to climb down from their positions and to subjugate themselves. However, in this case, with regard to Madison, I do feel that I need to apologize to our voters.

I knew that Jaak Madison had long been a political chancer who had no principles. In fact, we had a discussion within the party, in a smaller clique, what you might call a backroom discussion, last November, about whether we should even put Madison forward as a candidate in the European elections. But we concluded that we wouldn't be able to justify not doing that within our party or to our voters. After all, he has been highly visible and has done a lot of active work there. So, what argument could we make, aside from the fact that we know he's an adventurer?

And instead of this we decided to try and organize the candidate list in such a way that someone else from EKRE would get to the European Parliament this time. That didn't work out. The plan didn't go as we wanted, for a variety of reasons. One reason was undoubtedly the clear internal conflict within the party at that time, with the different factions working towards different goals

In hindsight, we should have either not included him on the list at all and then honestly explained to our voters why, or we should have informed people during the election campaign. There are many people now who are disappointed and angry, asking why we didn't talk about this situation earlier. However, the calculation often is that internal problems and disputes aren't brought to the public before elections—at least that's how I see it. That's why I didn't tell our voters not to support Jaak Madison, because he would deceive them

For the autumn season, we do have a plan. Naturally, I won't be sharing that plan in detail. After the congress which took place in mid-June, we have seen several different work meetings where we've actually outlined our directions, what we want to do, and how we want to do it. We will be putting that into practice come September.

It is important when the political season picks up again. This is similar to sporting competitions, where you need to be in shape when the competitions are on. During the off-season, you might still perform well, but I would ask, what has Isamaa been doing. Or what did they actually gain from that near 30 percent support, right after the Riigikogu elections and a year before the local elections? You can't really put that into the pot.

Perhaps it attracted some people to join up as members, and, undoubtedly, all parties are always interested in attracting new members. However, there is always another side to things: Those people who join a party that has high ratings usually want something for themselves right away. Whether it will prove possible to satisfy all their desires if the percentage should no longer be as high, that price would have to be paid later, via some internal tensions and dissatisfaction within that party.

If we are talking about the wider context, I, too, read Janek Mäggi's article yesterday, in which he mentioned that Jaak might be a future Center Party prime ministerial candidate.

That is theoretically entirely possible. If we consider this, that [Center Party chair Mihhail] Kõlvart doesn't really want to [be prime minister]. And maybe Kõlvart for various reasons wouldn't make it. But if the Center Party wants to play in the big league again, they need to have a prime ministerial candidate. What else would prompt Jaak Madison to team up in Europe with Jana Toom?

Yet when I compare his different statements, the day before he left our party, he said that EKRE is the best party in the world, and he' would not be going anywhere.

The next day, that statement was noteworthy. Then, a few days before he joined the Center Party, he talked about how the best party in the world was ERK, but he can't join them right now because he wants to work at the European Parliament. Then he went and joined the Center Party after previously criticizing them harshly, on various issues. And now he has already started defending the dismissed Center Party school principal who referred to the Forest Brothers as "bandits," arguing that the dismissal wasn't justified. I would simply question what words from his mouth actually have any value whatsoever?

Harsh words. It seems you had something to get off your chest.

Well, what is done is done.

At a press conference Mihhail Kõlvart gave, Jaak Madison also talked about giving the Center Party a new, more conservative direction, aiming to position the party more on the conservative-right axis.

The Center Party's voter base, which is predominantly Russian-speaking, is by nature conservative. There is nothing unusual about that. What was unnatural was the Center Party taking votes from Russian speakers while Tanel Kiik and Jüri Ratas were pushing a progressive, liberal, European, and green agenda. That was unsustainable as well as unnatural. This fact that the Center Party's political direction or leadership platform is now shifting to align more closely with the actual values of its voter base is more logical and probably a good thing. It will consolidate their voters.

From our perspective, there's a major issue at play here – and it is also Jaak Madison's Issue. The Conservative People's Party of Estonia (EKRE) is a national conservative party. We are Estonian nationalists; I've explained this to Russian-speaking voters who I've met on the streets as well.

We are nationalists, and that's just how it is. Among Center Party voters or even among their Russian-speaking supporters who back EKRE, there are undoubtedly Russians who are Estonian patriots.

If you're Russian, you can't be an Estonian nationalist, but you can be an Estonian patriot. And these voters have no problem supporting us.

However, among the Center Party's conservative Russian voters, there are certainly many who are not Estonian patriots but are, for example, Russian patriots.

Or they might not feel any strong connection to any form of patriotism at all. For them, supporting an Estonian nationalist politician or party would be very difficult.

Is the fact that so many conservative-oriented parties have now emerged in Estonia in any way problematic or worrying for the EKRE? This fragmentation is already quite major: Isamaa, the newly defined conservative Centre Party, ERK and then EKRE.

One can see whether the glass is half full or half empty. On the one hand, of course, I will continue to say that I regard them as ersatz conservatives, they are not real conservatives. They are making conservative-sounding noises and moves as there is a very large number of conservative voters in Estonia. Plus we have heard this talk for a long time in Estonia about how to solve the problem of the EKRE being, so to speak, the only political outlet for such voters. Well, this problem will now be resolved.

But on the other hand, if you look at it from a positive angle, first of all, competition makes you try, it makes everyone try.

None of these parties can, in this case, take the so-called conservative or nationalist vote; n the case of the Center Party, we will take an exception for granted here, but they will have to make an effort for that vote. Potentially, this means that whereas, for almost 30 years now, power in Estonia has been predominantly liberal, then if these parties all manage to build themselves up and make themselves strong, we may see a shift in the coming years, or even decades, to a conservative bloc dominating in Estonia, depending on how the cards are dealt out.

But for EKRE it is certainly a bad situation, as these parties serve to fragment your support. In fact, you may never get that 25 percent support back.

Politics is so dynamic. In that respect, to look at some summer percentage and fall into the grip that you'll never get this or that again.... I would remind you that Isamaa was below the electoral threshold for a year and a half before the elections to the Riigikogu; for years it was somewhere around 7 percent.

Yet it has been the most popular party in Estonia for almost a year now, all the time over 25 percent support. So politics is dynamic. It depends not only on those parties that seek support for themselves and seek support from the people, it also depends on external factors, including external factors outside Estonia.

You have called the new Kristen Michal administration the successor government of Kaja Kallas. Is that really the case or do you see any differences?

This is the same thing I said about style before; don't pay attention to style, it is the content that counts. And the substance of Michal's government is worse than Kaja Kallas'.

If the people of Estonia are now crying out that life has become hard, the difficulty, the poor life we have now, is the result of the decisions made by the previous two Kaja Kallas administrations.

The consequences of Kaja Kallas's tax hikes, the consequences of Kaja Kallas's green policy.

Those decisions that have been taken now, with the arrival of the Michal government this summer: The introduction of the car tax, the new tax rises, VAT, income tax, excise duties - these decisions will only start to affect people's lives perhaps a year from now.

Still, the Michal government's decisions will make life even worse. But with this, there is a small time reference. The current poor state of the Estonian economy is only the result of Kaja Kallas. The consequences of Michal's bad decisions lie in the future.

Another thing. Estonia's biggest problem is a demographic one; mass immigration. Estonia has been flooded with immigrants from the east in the last few years. Estonia has become Russian-speaking before our very eyes.

And at the same time, our own population is at a record low, and we are on a course for being a minority, and extinction as a nation. This does not even get talked about.

And the third aspect is still why we censured Vladimir Svet. Despite the course of the whole search for Kremlin talking points and Putinists from over- and underground, which the Reform Party has been engaged in here for the last few years, they have gone and hired a Kremlin talking points speaker and a Putinist to their government.

The lying that characterized Kaja Kallas' government also characterizes this new government. So in that respect naturally this is a successor government.

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