The Great Nordic Thread

[DavidB.]

What's my culture though? I don't care what food people eat, what clothes they wear, what music they listen to. It really does not matter at all to me. The only thing I care about is that people aren't put to death for non-violent crimes or imprisoned for their opinions. Also, socialized medicine is nice. Beyond those things though, anything goes.

That you are okay with anything does not in any way prove that there are no distinct European cultures. In fact, I fail to see any connection between the two issues.

[DavidB.]

Iceland is qualified for the European Championship for the first time ever:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=28&v=VIVenuCA1uw

This hurts   We lost to them twice...  But they deserve it. You gotta love Iceland.

[DavidB.]

Well "culture" is all fluid and constantly changing. European culture is dynamic enough to survive in a changed form. This isn't like the Native Americans or Abroginals Australians, whose culture was obliterated along with them.

Sure, but a bit besides the point.

Is it? I'm quite facetious on this forum, but I am being serious here. The idea that British or Swedish or any other culture is under some sort risk from supporting these refugees seems alien to me. Immigration changes a country's culture, of course - but so does emigration, and generational change, and increased technology, and literally any other event. perhaps it is sad to lose some quaint traditions to time, but I'm uncomfortable at the idea that the desperate should die or be locked into despondency simply under a Canute like desire to hold the tides of shifting culture.

Maybe I just didn't get it, but I don't think this discussion was in the first place about European national identities in relation to the refugee issue. It was just about the existence of European national identities.

[DavidB.]

Why is it that a Greenlandic (and Faroese) constitution would be so problematic as long as the content doesn't contradict the Danish constitution? The conflict about which one should be higher in importance, perhaps?

[DavidB.]

Interesting, thanks for your answer. Didn't know that the monarchy still has a role in Danish politics, as opposed to the Swedish situation. What does your Queen exactly do?

[DavidB.]

LLR still says there is no reason to close the border or reintroduce control.

So it seems that it becomes less likely that Denmark will reintroduce border control? Does this mean that DF's pressure has been in vain?

How does the cooperation between V and DF take place? Does DF, at this moment, have special negotiations with V in which it can demand concrete policy changes, or does it have exactly the same position as LA and the Conservatives?

[DavidB.]

Thanks for explaining this!

[DavidB.]

The dilemma of the Danish government is that DK will likely either be forced into the coming refugee quotas and thereby lose control of its own immigration policy, or will have to leave the Dublin Convention, which will likely make Denmark an "asylum magnet" because asylum seekers can not be sent back to other countries.

Given the fact that Dublin is already dead/not enforced anymore, do you think it is likely that Denmark will really become an "asylum magnet"?

Theoretically, migrants can currently as well get a fake passport, jump on a Greek plane and fly to Denmark - I know this because this literally happened to the Netherlands, and in practice, these people aren't being sent back. And even though Denmark is a rich country and a wonderful country to live in, it seems like it has a "bad rep" among migrants because of its relatively tough citizenship/immigration/integration laws. Even if Denmark leaves Dublin, I think it is more likely that migrants will opt for countries like Germany, Sweden, Austria, and the Netherlands. What's more, travelling through Schengen areas will soon be easier again. Governments won't hold on to these temporary border control measures forever. That will make it easier for migrants to go to other rich countries.

[DavidB.]

My opinion of Iceland has gone down drastically due to the boycott saga. Such morons. I'm flying to the US next month, hope I don't have a layover in that country because I don't want to visit it anymore.

[DavidB.]

Keep in mind, the mayor of the city has condemned the resolution and called for it to be repealed, so it's not Iceland as a whole, just their insane city council.

The resolution is also in violation of WTO statutes, so it's likely to bite them in the butt.

You're right Still I feel at least Reykjavik deserves to get some sh*t for doing this.

[DavidB.]

So it's basically a mix of LA views on fiscal issues, DPP views on immigration/EU issues and mainstream Danish conservative views on social issues... Seems exactly like the new Dutch VNL party. That will be quite an electoral niche, especially since Liberal Alliance has recently shifted toward more eurosceptical and immigration-critical positions. If successful, this new party might, indeed, hurt the Conservatives, Liberal Alliance, and possibly Venstre more than DPP, it seems to me. But are they actually to the "right" (odd word in this context, but you know what I mean) of DPP on the EU and immigration? Does DPP officially want to leave the EU?

[DavidB.]

If Lars Seier Christensen will be financing the new "We Conservatives" party, will he/Saxo Bank then quit bankrolling Liberal Alliance? That might be a big deal for LA (well, figuratively...). Or have they become independent of his "help" recently?

[DavidB.]

LOL/WTF that he has the chutzpah to talk about being treated "inhumanely" after killing 77 people. I agree with politicus: they should just let him terminate himself if he feels the need to do so.

[DavidB.]

Beside the obvious thing, they didn't believe in man-made global warming and they wanted to raise the development aid to the third world.

Why? That surely seems unexpected to me.

[DavidB.]

The fascinating thing with these polls is the stability. Except a few outliers almost all variation in the last five months has been within the margin of error, so basically the Icelandic party system has seemingly stabilized in a surreal scenario - for now. If there were wild swings it would be harder to take this seriously, but a third  of Icelandic electorate seems to have made up their mind that they are fed up the establishment and want constitutional reforms and public ownership to natural resources, no matter how the economy goes. Everyone in the pundit class, the business world and the political establishment are waiting for the Pirates to implode, but so far they have waited five months (and a couple of months before that when they rose).

The Icelandic Donald Trumps.

[DavidB.]

Yeah, when the Liberals came second in their "bloc" they could have known they were going to be fycked, and the fact that they're governing alone, without DPP, makes things even worse. Their floor will probably be (or: become) much lower than this, just wait and see.

[DavidB.]

It's actually so that I wish we could hand over the reigns of government to the Sweden Democrats for a year and watch them crash and burn and destroy themselves and we could finally move on and have actual political discussions again in this country.

The FPÖ screwed up in government badly and is now at an all-time high in the polls. The PVV caused the most right-wing government in Dutch post-WWII history to collapse (at least in people's perception) and is now at an all-time high in the polls. (And let's also remember that government cooperation doesn't necessarily have to hurt the new-right party, see DF.)

The reason that the SDs are big isn't the SDs (even though they clearly seem to do things right strategically). The reason that the SDs are big is that Sweden's immigration policy seems to cause problems in society that are relevant to people's lives. That's not going to change if the SDs screw up in government. Sure, they will probably lose badly in the next elections, but the immigration issue will continue to be politically salient as long as the current open-door policy isn't changed (and even if it is, failing integration of the people who are already in would be a fertile soil for the SDs to operate on), so even if they screw up in government, a comeback in terms of electoral success is a likely scenario. And even if the SDs "crash and burn", a new anti-immigration party would probably emerge due to the salience of the issue and the vacuum on that side of the political landscape.

Here you see what happens when xenophopic right-wing populist party which labels itself as "working class party without socialism" attacks the unions in the cabinet at the same time with refugee crisis.

I think PS' failure to prevent mass immigration is the real reason that they are declining in the polls rapidly. I read that the Finnish Muslim population will double this year. That doesn't seem to be what PS voters wished for. It seems utterly unclear in what way PS is delivering on its promises, and that is deadly to parties whose support is largely based on the sentiment that "the other parties don't deliver".

[DavidB.]

I can think of a couple MPs who might leave but in general the PS MPs are very afraid of standing up to chairman Soini. If a new party to the right of PS were founded, I don't think it would attract more than 3-4 MPs.

You mean by "attract" 3 or 4 PS MPs, or you mean they would only win a few seats in the next election? The first case I could understand, but if it's the second case, could you elaborate on that?

[DavidB.]

Finland has a party to the right of PS, the Blue and White Front. Perhaps they could gain voters from PS.

One would think there should be political space for a party somewhere between the True Moderate Hero Finns/Moderate Hero Finns Party on the one hand and a sister party of f-ing Jobbik on the other hand, but you might be right.

To the Finnish posters: how likely is it that Soini will do a Wilders and make the coalition collapse if PS continues to poll very, very badly? I see that there have seldom been snap elections in Finland. If PS steps out, would that lead to new elections or would KESK and KOK include another party/other parties without new elections?

[DavidB.]

I'd say it's very unlikely that Soini himself would want to leave the coalition at any point. If the party were to leave, then it would probably be because of the rest of the party pressuring him to do it, if the immigration situation and other things continue to escalate and the poll numbers continue to drop.

If PS were to leave, Kesk and Kok would probably first try to get the Swedish People's Party and the Christian Democrats to join. They would probably accept, seeing that their opposition politics has been less confrontational than that of the leftist parties. The majority would be slim though, 101 (Finnish coalitions rarely operate on such slim majorities, though Stubb's coalition did it for the latter part of its term). Getting the Greens into some combination would be another option but that would require Kesk to make some compromises on environment issues.

True, there is a big difference between Soini and Wilders: Soini actually gets his prestigious ministerial job out of the coalition agreement, whereas Wilders provided outside support and remained an MP. Thanks for clearing the coalition situation up Would the majority of Finns consider such a "reshuffle" without elections acceptable in this day and age, or would many insist on snap elections instead of the scenario you described?

[DavidB.]

I think people would probably accept a reshuffle. The last snap election was in 1975, so people are used to having parliaments sit full terms.

Interesting. Reshuffling without new elections used to be acceptable in the Netherlands as well, but not anymore since the 70s/80s. There has been no legislation on this, but political culture has simply changed: today, it would be inconceivable not to hold snap elections - but parliaments not serving full terms is normal here. Thanks for your answers.

I could answer you, it's some good point you bring up, but honestly DavidB brought most of the points up. Through there's one thing I will say again SD is not Progress Party or the True Finns, they're quite different from SD, which have more in common with the Danish Progress Party than either.

In what sense?

[DavidB.]

There are people that vote for SD for all kinds of strange reasons, but 90% of those who do, have immigration and the EU as their reason. The same I'm certain is true for PS.

I doubt that this is true for PS. I have the impression that PS, as Helsinkian stated, is able to attract more voters on economic issues than SD. That's logical. It needs to do so in order to win many votes, because in Finland immigration has not been nearly as salient an issue as in Sweden (until recently). "Mass immigration" wasn't an actual thing in Finland until this year - of course it was part of PS' rhetoric, but the effects of third-world immigration used to be much less relevant to Finnish voters and to Finland than to Swedish voters and to Sweden because of the enormous difference in numbers.

The EU, on the other hand, seemed more salient in Finland than in Sweden: I think PS attracts more voters on the basis of their EU-related views than SD does. Again, this is logical, because Sweden isn't in the eurozone.

[DavidB.]

The idea that PS is somehow a more well-rounded party than SD is absurd. SD also has other policies than their immigration policy, but that isn't the reason people vote for them, and neither is PS rural policy the reason people choose to vote for them.

Why does that seem so strange to you?

[DavidB.]

Well, PS' lukewarm relation with SD obviously seems influenced by PS' position on issues regarding the Swedish-speaking minority in Finland.

[DavidB.]

I think "economically responsible" should be the second one.

Very interesting that "Christian" is deemed relevant. Didn't expect that.

Also quite interesting that DF is considered Christian, whereas the Dutch PVV has quite similar positions on social (and national) issues and is deemed a very secular party, which is a common criticism from Christian parties - who are, of course, also afraid to lose voters, so it's up for debate how intellectually honest this criticism is, but still, the difference in common perception is remarkable. Has everything to do with the difference between Danish and Dutch history, cleavages, and the parliamentary presence of "real" Christian parties in the Netherlands, of course.

Anyhow, this chart quite adequately shows why I still support DF even if their economic policies are not exactly what I'd wish for (to put it mildly).