Denmark Parliamentary Election - June 18, 2015

[Antonio the Sixth]

Ah, I see even Denmark falls into the "males are reffered to by their last name - females by their first name" patronizing category of countries like Brazil in their Presidential race recently. Good to know.

Lökke was his middle name though, right?

[Diouf]

Ah, I see even Denmark falls into the "males are reffered to by their last name - females by their first name" patronizing category of countries like Brazil in their Presidential race recently. Good to know.

Lökke was his middle name though, right?

Yeah, but since Rasmussen is a very common name, and was the name of three PMs in a row, the middle name is by far the most used. He will either be called Lars Løkke or his full name Lars Løkke Rasmussen. If you just said Lars Rasmussen, no one would think of the politician; many would probably think of this former handballer, turned coach, instead: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zw-oK9_OxcI

The same was the case with Anders Fogh and Poul Nyrup.

This is a poster from the Social Democrats, so it could be seen as personalize ourselves, depersonalize the opponent trick, but it is probably mainly a reflection of the fact that these are the two most used short versions of their names which could be seen as patronizing, I guess.

[politicus]

"Do as Poul vote for Dan" (for current Minister of Agriculture Dan Jørgensen) - being on first name with former PM Poul Nyrup Rasmussen.



"Morten - More Denmark, less EU" for DPP #1 candidate Morten Messerschmidt.

Danish SDs are famous for referring to each other by first name. It has often been parodied.
Personally popular working class 70s PM Anker Jørgensen was always known simply as Anker and is remembered as the last PM the whole nation was on a first name basis with. It is a badge of honour.

DPP successfully imitated this folksiness when Morten Messerschmidt ran in the Euros.

Besides Thorning-Schmidt is hyphenated, so it sounds way too middle class (even posh). Trying to brand her as Helle is necessary.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Ah, I see that Denmark shares that issue wrt double-barreled names with England.

[politicus]

She uses her full name on regular electoral posters and I guess they could have gone with Thorning for the campaigns (that is what the journos call her), but that doesn't sound good.

I have only seen it on this rip off/parody of Denmark's most famous electoral poster the iconic Stauning or Chaos by their youth organization. The Stauning/Thorning analogy makes it logical in this context.




Here is one more first name poster with a male SD leader:



"Svend is long (=far) better" for 2 meter tall former Chairman Svend Auken.

[ingemann]

Ah, I see that Denmark shares that issue wrt double-barreled names with England.

They're relative uncommon, names like Lars Løkke Rasmussen's (where Løkke is his mother's maiden name) are more common.

[politicus]

Blue Bloc has presented a joint proposal of lowering the age of criminal responsibility from 15 to 12 and introducing Child and Youth Courts.

*Throws up a bit in my mouth*

Denmark why do you do this to me? I like you Denmark! Why do all your parties have to be either  socialists, annoying feel-good hipsters or wanna-be Texas Republicans? (I count Helle and her followers as wanna-be Republicans)  

Well, Mr. Hyperbole Texas Republicans are hardly the inspiration for anyone here. Ron Paul is the only Texan that ever inspired any Danish politicians and only the radical wing of Liberal Alliance.

Whether they're inspired by them or not is besides the point. Lowering the age of criminal responsibility is exactly the sort  of populist, unscientific, and reactionary social conservatism I'd expect from Texas Republicans, not from supposedly liberal European parties like Venstre and LA, or for that sake, Social Democratic parties.

And if that's hyperboling according to you, I'll hyberbole with pride.

Being "tough on crime" and implementing symbolic policies to show this is not the preserve of American right wingers - most right wing parties do it to some degree.

SD is against this - always has been.

The Liberals is a mainstream Conservative party in all but name and has been for close to two decades now.

LA is increasingly a generic right wing party with a few Libertarian positions as window dressing. In the long run LA will kill off the Conservatives and take over the Conservatives right wing tradition (the party was always split down the middle). They recruit from the same social segment, where the youngs vote LA and the olds Conservative. As you can see in the death penalty poll earlier in thread their voters are significantly more pro-death penalty than Conservative voters - and the death penalty is the ultimate irrational, symbolic "tough on crime" instrument.

Not sure where the "Social Conservative" left wing of the Conservatives will go (not SoCon in the US sense - pro public welfare and unions, relatively green, pro planning, likes culture etc.). I suppose younger people from this segment will go to the Social Liberals, that are now economically right wing, pro defence and not too overly soft on crime. Otherwise maybe SD, actually.

[politicus]

On the 75 jubilee for Denmarks humiliating capitulation in 1940 ("Never another April 9" was the slogan of the pro-NATO parties during the Cold War) the Conservatives launch a new defence proposal. They want the Danish military strengthened and the capability to mobilize large forces in wartime reintroduced. This was abolished in 2004 in favour of a smaller force dominated by professional soldiers and focused on overseas international operations.

Party leader Søren Pape Poulsen wants a future centre-right government to let a fast working expert committee evaluate Danish security policy and want the defence budget increased with a 1 billion a year right away.  

As late as 2012 the Conservatives agreed to support budget cuts of 2,7 billion Danish kroner a year, so quite a turnaround, but according to Pape Poulsen Denmarks security situation has been fundamentally altered by Russian aggression since then.

They cite military experts that the army has de facto been reduced to a militia without artillery and with only 28 fully operational tanks, and that it can not operate independently, but is de facto just a subdivision that will have to be plugged-in in coalition forces (but that was kinda the point of the 2004 reform..).

Denmark will already be spending 30 billion kroner on new fighter jets in the coming years, so if the Army should also be restored to Cold War-level, that would be quite costly and require significant budget cuts elsewhere. One billion a year is peanuts in this contexts and pure symbolism.

Defence may be one of the few things where the Conservatives can easily go to the right of the other centre-right parties, so a logical move.

[politicus]

Perhaps I should mention that 19 year old poet and media darling Yahya Hassan has joined the Nationalpartiet and will be a candidate for them, which has given the obscure micro-party a lot of media interest and a small chance to get in if they are able to run (but more likely a chance to waste 1% of left leaning votes).

Nationaplartiet still needs another 8,000 approved signatures to the eligible to run, but apparently they do have a lot of signatures waiting for approval, so not totally without chances.

Yahya Hassan became a literary sensation over night with his autobiographical collection of poems selling over 100,000 copies, which is unheard of for a debutant lyricist, and was at first embraced by the DPP for his fierce critique of ghetto culture and mentality.

Nationalpartiet - started by three Pakistani brothers and with the slogan "We are Denmark" (has been discussed earlier in thread) - is an outgrowth of an obscure local list in the Copenhagen suburb Hvidovre and has mostly been seen as a provocation/joke. The party still has the problem that they celebrate diversity, but all candidates are men with immigrant background. Would need some women and a few palefaces to appear credible. Their platform is also full of platitudes to a degree that is ridiculous even by modern political standards.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahya_Hassan

[politicus]

I have been fairly critical of Liberal Alliance, so in all fairness I should try to argue why.

If one should explain why a party founded by the right wing of the Social Liberals and focused on a break with Big Mother-society and the nanny state - originating in New Alliance, that was intended as a centrist and humanistic bourgeois alternative to DPP + a party literarely named Bourgeois Centre - ended up proposing  a total stop for war refugees and sending 12 year olds in prison there is a number of factors to consider:

The MPs are not all right wingers, some come from the Social Liberals - incl. their party leader and parliamentary leader and spokesperson - but their voters are mainly right wingers  and this influences their politics – and some MPs are right wingers. Most notably Ole Birk Olesen founder of the netmedia 180 grader (degrees).


Money: The Saxo Bank party:

Liberal Alliance is bankrolled by billionaire Lars Seier Christensen, the co-founder of investment bank (or financial casino for farmers, contractors and dentists who want to gamble in currency, futures and derivatives) Saxo Bank. Lars Seier Christensens career took him from bar owner in Costa de Sol via a stint as stock broker in Londons City over dubious side street broker in Copenhagen to billionaire status after co-founding Saxo Bank and moved to low tax Switzerland afterwards.

LSC has a past in Conservative Youth in Copenhagen (KUK), which unlike the rest of the Young Conservatives was libertarian and anarco-capitalist - Saxo Bank has distributed Atlas Shrugged to all high schools in Denmark. He joined Liberal Alliance as an "adviser" when Samuelsen was left alone with what remained of New Alliance after (almost) everybody else had left. Stating that he could see the vision in low taxes and abolishing bureaucracy, but not really caring about the rest of the platform. So LA is free to move wherever it wants as long as it promoted low taxes and downsizing the public sector. If this includes moving to the right on immigration and law and order to accommodate DPP and the Liberals, so be it.  


Ole Birk Olesen and the need for a 180 degree turnaround:

Ole Birk Olesen left a job as political journalist at conservative daily Berlingske in protest against the dominance of left wing media (in a country where only two small dailys are left of centre) and founded 180 grader - a “user-directed bourgeois newspaper” - so sort of a meta-blog. It attracts people (ie. men) who are very right wing and often racist, sexist and share a hatred of "mooochers". Since OBO is a LA MP it seems to serve as an unofficial outlet for the party right wing.


The annoying big sister:

Mette Bock is a well-educated lady, joint masters in philosophy and polsci, former program director at public service broadcaster DR, editor-in-chief of large local newspaper. She has even been been a parliamentary candidate for the SPP in her youth. So she basically embodies the pink bourgeoisie that many in LA hates and has standard social liberal attitudes to refugees and civil rights. She is also the older sister of party chairman Anders Samuelsen and a LA MP and many on the right wing feel she acts as a stop for moving the party in “the right direction”. There are often calls for Samuelsen to shut up his big sister on blogs associated with the right wing and her relationship with Ole Birk Olesen is strained. It looks like her views are increasingly in the minority in LA.


Liberal feminism:

Former chairman of their Youth Organization Rasmus Brygger tried to raise a debate of what he called liberal feminism - how to address gender inequality without involving big government. This would seem like a natural idea for a party of that type, but the backlash from within was enormous and he was widely ridiculed. Virtually no one in the party defended him.
The Conservatives and Liberals are generally mildly sceptical towards feminism, but not actively hostile, but LA has become the bastion of MRAs and female anti-feminists, which makes its popularity among young guys disturbing.


VIPs: Very Intolerant People:

When viewing which mainstream parties the very intolerant people prefer DPP got the homophobes and most Islamophobes, but LA attracts sexists, “moocher-haters”, classicists and a surprising number of Islamohobes and racists – partly because DPP is very heavy-handed with throwing out extremists, but likely also because they feel an affinity with the LA right wing.


The fringe: MRAs, Islamophobes and Monday lectures:

MANDdag means Monday in Danish and mand is man. It is also the name of a series of seminars for “men who are critical of society" and likes to discuss stuff like centralbanks, bitcoins, precious metals, and the possibility of founding new communities in “the outside world” (= White male libertarian utopias in Third World countries). It attracts an interesting crowd of MRAs, Islamophobes and libertarians connected via facebook friendships; among them the son of Denmark's most famous cult leader, a leading member of the “shirt and tie” Neo-Nazi the Danes Party, an ex-cop and member of the secret Aarhus based far right ORG network convicted for abusing police registers, former members of Danish Front and Stop the Islamization of Denmark, editors of the anti-system and anti-feminist the Peoples Newspaper, the founder of MANFO (a so-called think tank dedicated to counter our government sponsored research center on women's issues and gender studies KVINFO) a former airline pilot who runs a blog called Maskulin Modstand (masculine resistance) dedicated to the fight against “femifascism”, who is also obsessed with Islam and immigration, the founder of the MGTOW (Men Going Their Own Way) movement and a weird tiny lodge called Danegilde (Guild of Danes) dedicated to politically incorrect talk and the fight against  "social constructivism and cultural Marxism". Very small circle, less than a hundred all in all, but it is interesting that their lectures includes speakers who are in LA and a lot of them themselves are LA members (the MRAs, not the far right types).

Some pretty extremist people have found a home on the right wing of LA. While DPP tolerate a small group of homophobes from evangelical circles (and even made one family spokesperson) and obviously have a fair share of closet-racists, it would never let these guys stay in.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Aren't there limits on private contributions to political parties in Denmark? It's pretty disturbing that Saxo Bank has so much influence over a political party.

[politicus]

Aren't there limits on private contributions to political parties in Denmark? It's pretty disturbing that Saxo Bank has so much influence over a political party.

No, you just have to declare your contributions.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Aren't there limits on private contributions to political parties in Denmark? It's pretty disturbing that Saxo Bank has so much influence over a political party.

No, you just have to declare your contributions.

Well, that's quite an Epic Fail on Denmark.

[politicus]

Aren't there limits on private contributions to political parties in Denmark? It's pretty disturbing that Saxo Bank has so much influence over a political party.

No, you just have to declare your contributions.

Well, that's quite an Epic Fail on Denmark.

Well, our dominant television stations are public broadcasters, who are obliged to cover all parties - if not evenly, then fairly. So money is generally not that big a problem. LA is kinda a special case and its voters are pro-business/low tax anyway.

[politicus]

Just to clarify: I did not mean to say LA is an extremist party, just that a sizeable share (likely a majority) of its voters are people who would traditionally be right wing Conservatives and another big part people who would have been right wing Liberals. This puts a pressure on them to cater to right wingers and they increasingly give in to this pressure - also because part of their parliamentary group are themselves right wingers.

I also think it is interesting whether a party a) attracts extremists b) if so, what kind of extremists. And LA clearly has an appeal to various radicals that the traditional centre-right doesn't.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Just to clarify: I did not mean to say LA is an extremist party, just that a sizeable share (likely a majority) of its voters are people who would traditionally be right wing Conservatives and others who would be right wing Liberals. This puts a pressure on them to cater to right wingers and they increasingly give in to this pressure - also because part of their parliamentary group are themselves right wingers.

I also think it is interesting whether a party a) attracts extremists b) if so, what kind of extremists. And LA clearly has an appeal to various radicals that the traditional centre-right doesn't.

What parties were these extremists voting for before LA appeared? DFP? Venstre?

[politicus]

Just to clarify: I did not mean to say LA is an extremist party, just that a sizeable share (likely a majority) of its voters are people who would traditionally be right wing Conservatives and others who would be right wing Liberals. This puts a pressure on them to cater to right wingers and they increasingly give in to this pressure - also because part of their parliamentary group are themselves right wingers.

I also think it is interesting whether a party a) attracts extremists b) if so, what kind of extremists. And LA clearly has an appeal to various radicals that the traditional centre-right doesn't.

What parties were these extremists voting for before LA appeared? DFP? Venstre?

Many MRAs are young and would not have voted before LA.

As for the rest my guess would be DPP for most of the older ones - despite it being too "Social Democratic" and increasingly also too moderate for them, others just Conservative/Liberal or no vote. The old Progress Party (which mixed libertarianism, Islamophobia and firm hand populism) had most of those types before it collapsed in the 90s and DPP split-off from the Progress Party. A lot of reactionaries also went from the Progress Party to the Conservatives despite it not being very right wing - probably mostly an identity matter. People who came from left wing circles and became Islamophobes typically also chose the Conservatives as a first pit stop on their way rightwards. It just has a stronger right wing brand than the Liberals, even though they are more right wing on a large number of issues.

[Guesswho]

I have been fairly critical of Liberal Alliance, so in all fairness I should try to argue why.

If one should explain why a party founded by the right wing of the Social Liberals and focused on a break with Big Mother-society and the nanny state - originating in New Alliance, that was intended as a centrist and humanistic bourgeois alternative to DPP + a party literarely named Bourgeois Centre - ended up proposing  a total stop for war refugees and sending 12 year olds in prison there is a number of factors to consider:

The MPs are not all right wingers, some come from the Social Liberals - incl. their party leader and parliamentary leader and spokesperson - but their voters are mainly right wingers  and this influences their politics – and some MPs are right wingers. Most notably Ole Birk Olesen founder of the netmedia 180 grader (degrees).


Money: The Saxo Bank party:

Liberal Alliance is bankrolled by billionaire Lars Seier Christensen, the co-founder of investment bank (or financial casino for farmers, contractors and dentists who want to gamble in currency, futures and derivatives) Saxo Bank. Lars Seier Christensens career took him from bar owner in Costa de Sol via a stint as stock broker in Londons City over dubious side street broker in Copenhagen to billionaire status after co-founding Saxo Bank and moved to low tax Switzerland afterwards.

LSC has a past in Conservative Youth in Copenhagen (KUK), which unlike the rest of the Young Conservatives was libertarian and anarco-capitalist - Saxo Bank has distributed Atlas Shrugged to all high schools in Denmark. He joined Liberal Alliance as an "adviser" when Samuelsen was left alone with what remained of New Alliance after (almost) everybody else had left. Stating that he could see the vision in low taxes and abolishing bureaucracy, but not really caring about the rest of the platform. So LA is free to move wherever it wants as long as it promoted low taxes and downsizing the public sector. If this includes moving to the right on immigration and law and order to accommodate DPP and the Liberals, so be it.  


Ole Birk Olesen and the need for a 180 degree turnaround:

Ole Birk Olesen left a job as political journalist at conservative daily Berlingske in protest against the dominance of left wing media (in a country where only two small dailys are left of centre) and founded 180 grader - a “user-directed bourgeois newspaper” - so sort of a meta-blog. It attracts people (ie. men) who are very right wing and often racist, sexist and share a hatred of "mooochers". Since OBO is a LA MP it seems to serve as an unofficial outlet for the party right wing.


The annoying big sister:

Mette Bock is a well-educated lady, joint masters in philosophy and polsci, former program director at public service broadcaster DR, editor-in-chief of large local newspaper. She has even been been a parliamentary candidate for the SPP in her youth. So she basically embodies the pink bourgeoisie that many in LA hates and has standard social liberal attitudes to refugees and civil rights. She is also the older sister of party chairman Anders Samuelsen and a LA MP and many on the right wing feel she acts as a stop for moving the party in “the right direction”. There are often calls for Samuelsen to shut up his big sister on blogs associated with the right wing and her relationship with Ole Birk Olesen is strained. It looks like her views are increasingly in the minority in LA.


Liberal feminism:

Former chairman of their Youth Organization Rasmus Brygger tried to raise a debate of what he called liberal feminism - how to address gender inequality without involving big government. This would seem like a natural idea for a party of that type, but the backlash from within was enormous and he was widely ridiculed. Virtually no one in the party defended him.
The Conservatives and Liberals are generally mildly sceptical towards feminism, but not actively hostile, but LA has become the bastion of MRAs and female anti-feminists, which makes its popularity among young guys disturbing.


VIPs: Very Intolerant People:

When viewing which mainstream parties the very intolerant people prefer DPP got the homophobes and most Islamophobes, but LA attracts sexists, “moocher-haters”, classicists and a surprising number of Islamohobes and racists – partly because DPP is very heavy-handed with throwing out extremists, but likely also because they feel an affinity with the LA right wing.


The fringe: MRAs, Islamophobes and Monday lectures:

MANDdag means Monday in Danish and mand is man. It is also the name of a series of seminars for “men who are critical of society" and likes to discuss stuff like centralbanks, bitcoins, precious metals, and the possibility of founding new communities in “the outside world” (= White male libertarian utopias in Third World countries). It attracts an interesting crowd of MRAs, Islamophobes and libertarians connected via facebook friendships; among them the son of Denmark's most famous cult leader, a leading member of the “shirt and tie” Neo-Nazi the Danes Party, an ex-cop and member of the secret Aarhus based far right ORG network convicted for abusing police registers, former members of Danish Front and Stop the Islamization of Denmark, editors of the anti-system and anti-feminist the Peoples Newspaper, the founder of MANFO (a so-called think tank dedicated to counter our government sponsored research center on women's issues and gender studies KVINFO) a former airline pilot who runs a blog called Maskulin Modstand (masculine resistance) dedicated to the fight against “femifascism”, who is also obsessed with Islam and immigration, the founder of the MGTOW (Men Going Their Own Way) movement and a weird tiny lodge called Danegilde (Guild of Danes) dedicated to politically incorrect talk and the fight against  "social constructivism and cultural Marxism". Very small circle, less than a hundred all in all, but it is interesting that their lectures includes speakers who are in LA and a lot of them themselves are LA members (the MRAs, not the far right types).

Some pretty extremist people have found a home on the right wing of LA. While DPP tolerate a small group of homophobes from evangelical circles (and even made one family spokesperson) and obviously have a fair share of closet-racists, it would never let these guys stay in.

Noticing this thread from a Google alert discussing my name and party I feel it might be interesting to try to add some perspectives to the current discussions about Liberal Alliance.

First, in regards to the money:

While it is true that Liberal Alliance is in the high end of sponsored parties, it is hardly ground for critique. Take, for example, the budget for the 2011 parlimentary elections (I can unfortunately not add links, but the numbers are fairly easy to find) . Liberal Alliance is ranked fourth, but a close fifth is the socialist party with only a few more mandates in Parliament. At to that that the social party - and others - received more public money to support their campaign, so overall Liberal Alliance only had the fifth largest campaign budget. Furthermore, the left parties only received indirect political campaign support from the unions which, if added, pushes Liberal Alliances further down.

About Ole Birk Olesen and his news site:

Let me start by saying that I am in no way favor of the site and while it is true that the site today is inhabited by a lot of racism and misogyny this wasn't always the case. Remember that the site is user driven - and that Ole personally has fought ferousciously against this segment of the side. Unfortunately, a lot of us more progressive liberals has abandoned the site because of these people, leaving the site to them, but that does is in way implicate the party of Ole personally.

In regards to Mette Bock, the annoying big sister:

While it is true that she is hated by the aforementioned segment and by some national conservative within the party, she is in no way the minority in the party. She is still, for example, the spokesperson for the party's foreign politics and have made it party politics to be critical to both sides of the Israel/Palestine debate (in contrast to the right wingers who are 100% supporting Israel.

Liberal Feminism:

While I agree that the party - or more in general the entire right - has an anti-feminist problem, I would argue that there are in fact are lot supporting the cause (I can name names if needed). I think the antifeminism issue is a general problem globally among classical liberal and conservative groups - but there are certainly many in the party and in the right in general who are critical of this.

The thing you're mentioning, MANDdag, is in no way an official party activity (I'm pretty sure it actually doesn't have anything directly to do with the party).

Overall, it is of course fair to be critical of a political party one doesn't favor, but these points of critic is, IMHO, not fair and not adding anything constructive to the debate. I, personally, am in no way a big fanboy of the party - and have criticized it on numerous occasion. But let's at least have a debate on proper terms.

PS: I'm new here so I don't know how everything functions, but I'd be happy to answer any questions regarding the party, Danish classical liberalism og Danish politics in general from a classical liberal perspective.

[politicus]

The latest Faroese polls show that the left wing nationalist Republicans will pass the liberal Union Party and get the second Faroese seat. This would give a 4-0 distribution of the North Atlantic seats and make it possible for HTS to stay on with just 86 Danish seats (which she has in recent polls). There hasn't been a "Red 4-0" since the 1975 election, but it looks possible this time.

The Union Party has had the PM post for seven years and voters are turning against them, while the right wing People's Party is losing support over softening their pro-independence stance.

Given that there are four big parties competing for two seats on the Faroe Islands and the small parties lends support to one of them it is hard to predict Faroese Folketing elections, but with SDs ahead and the Republicans picking up the die hard nationalist vote it looks promising for the left.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Hi, mysterious Liberal Alliance person!

So, how much do you agree with the idea that politicus states: that LA has sold out in terms of its policy on migration for the benefits of fitting in with the 'blue bloc'. Is their much internal angst within the party on being increasingly lumped in with statist parties like, for example, the DPP?

[Guesswho]

Hi, mysterious Liberal Alliance person!

So, how much do you agree with the idea that politicus states: that LA has sold out in terms of its policy on migration for the benefits of fitting in with the 'blue bloc'. Is their much internal angst within the party on being increasingly lumped in with statist parties like, for example, the DPP?

I do agree with that statement - and it's very troubling and problematic. But it's worth noting that - with very few exemptions - this is the case for all Danish political parties (the exception being the Red-Green Alliance far left party. Even the social liberals have moved on these issues because of the pressure from DPP)

[politicus]

Hi Rasmus

Since you are registered under rbrygger@gmail.com and that is the mail listed on Rasmus Bryggers home page  I must assume you really are Rasmus Brygger (even though there are ways to fake that).

While not an expert on your party it is clearly my impression it is drifting rightwards.

How do you feel about 34% of your voters supporting the death penalty in that poll quoted earlier in thread.

/politicus

[Guesswho]

Well, that depends on what you mean as rightwards. If you mean more nationalistic, that's somewhat true, but that can be said of most parties in Parliament.

About the death penalty - I'm very critical of that and wonder why numbers are that high. Especially since it would surprise me very much if there were anyone in the party leadership that supported that (there aren't). I think this is a common problem with the 'hard on crime' rhetorics on the right - but again doesn't really have much to do with LA afaik.

[YL]

How do you see Liberal Alliance as representing something different from Venstre and the Conservatives?  (Or indeed the right wing of Radikale Venstre?)

[Guesswho]

Well, it is the only party who consistently has spoken for free market reforms. That cannot be said for the other right wing parties nor the social liberals. This is also the only reason that the party has been able to capture that many voters from these parties.