Danish rightwinger Kristian Thulesen Dahl rides high on populist tide

[pampango]

When Kristian Thulesen Dahl first heard that election-night exit polls were predicting a doubling of support for his populist, rightwing Danish People’s party (DPP), he burst into song. Cheered on by supporters on a stage in Copenhagen, he led the celebrations with a rendition of the Liverpool FC anthem You’ll Never Walk Alone.

Thulesen Dahl’s success in helping the DPP become the second-largest party in Denmark’s parliament, the Folketing, with 21% of the vote, sets a daunting precedent that Britain’s UKIP – with which the DPP is sometimes compared – can only dream of matching. Whatever people may say about the clean-cut, politically savvy Thulesen Dahl and his divisive anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant, anti-Brussels stance, he is no Nigel Farage.

In a country of 5.7 million people, of whom 9% were born abroad, immigration from within the EU and from further afield is an incendiary issue that has become mixed up with anti-Muslim, or anti-Islamic, sentiment. Denmark received almost 15,000 asylum seekers in 2014, more than double the number for 2013. Like other European countries, it is watching the unprecedented influx of migrants across the Mediterranean this year with trepidation.

Thulesen Dahl’s specific policies comprise cuts to immigration, withdrawal from the EU’s Schengen free-movement area and reinstating border controls with Germany and Sweden, opposition to further EU integration (including a possible British-style in/out referendum), cuts in foreign aid, higher pensions for the less well-off and higher business taxes.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/19/denmark-kristian-thulesen-dahl-populist-tide

Another right winger against freedom of movement in Europe and cuts to immigration and foreign aid. What else is new?