Reykjavík Grapevine - 22.05.2015, Síða 10

10 The Reykjavík GrapevineIssue 6 — 2015
Opinion | Hmm...
Ever since the latest recession began,
the general rule in European politics has
been this: Whatever you have is what you
don’t want. Rather than shifting to either
the left or the right, voters have tended to
vote against whoever was in power. After
it all went wrong in 2008, sitting govern-
ments lost power in one country after
another. Iceland was no exception, with
the nation voting against the centre-right
ruling parties in 2009 and then voting
them back in 2013. In the same manner,
the British voted against the centre-left
Labour Party in 2010 for the first time in
over a decade.
However, the recent Conservative
victory in the UK is the latest example
of the trend being bucked. The conserva-
tives have managed to hang onto power
in Germany, and have been taking over
in the Nordic countries too, while the So-
cialist Hollande must look nervously on
from the Champ-Elysees.
Left, right, left…
This brings us to the second noteworthy
happening: the complete destruction of
the Labour Party in Scotland at the hands
of the Scottish Nationalists.
After 2008, people everywhere de-
cided that maybe this whole free market
business wasn’t such a great idea and
looked hopefully to the left for solutions.
None were forthcoming. So while the
right has been slowly clawing back its
lost ground, the left has been left in
complete disarray.
Nowhere has this been evident
than in Iceland. After the Pots and
Pans Revolution in January 2009
ejected the Indepen-
dence Party (which
held government along
with the Social Demo-
crats), elections were
held and the country
got its first two-party
government of the
left, starring the Social
Democrats and, for the
first time ever, the Left-Greens.
Even though this conflagration,
headed by Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir, ar-
guably managed to stave off the worst
effects of the economic collapse, they
soon lost credibility with the people
who started looking elsewhere for so-
lutions.
The first of these appeared in the
municipal elections of 2010. Come-
dian Jón Gnarr formed The Best Party
and, to everyone’s surprise, succeeded
in becoming mayor of Reykjavík. An
off-shoot party, Bright Future, ran na-
tionwide in 2013. They failed to repeat
the runaway success of the Best Party
in Reykjavik, but still managed to get
six of their members elected to Parlia-
ment.
Meet the new boss…
By this time, the party of the future was,
surprisingly enough, the oldest political
party in the country. As a centrist party
that has been around since 1916, the
Progressives have usually been happy
to work with whoever offered them the
most. Having ruled with the conservative
Independence Party from 1995 to 2005,
they played a major role
in the privatisation of
the banks that eventual-
ly led to the catastrophic
financial crisis, but also
benefited from not be-
ing in government when
the actual collapse took
place.
Of Iceland’s four
traditional parties, the Progressives had
been out of power the longest by the time
the 2013 elections came around, and
they had a whiff of freshness about them
under their new chairman, Sigmundur
Davíð Gunnlaugsson. More importantly,
they had been vehemently opposed to
paying back the British and Dutch who
lost money in Icesave accounts after the
banking collapse. When the European
Court ruled in Iceland’s favour in the Ic-
esave dispute in early 2013, the party was
proved right (legally, at least), and the
road was open to a win in the spring elec-
tions.
Sigmundur became the new prime
minister, and chose as his co-regents the
Independence Party. This seemed to re-
turn Iceland back to the pre-collapse sta-
tus quo, as these are the parties that have
usually run the place.
A ship with 50 cannons
approaching
However, all is not as it seems. Iceland-
ers in general still feel deeply frustrated
after the economic collapse. Real wages
have fallen, prices keep rising, people
are still moving to Norway in droves and
the country is beset by strikes. This is
reflected in opinion polls, which suggest
that the current government would win
just over 30% of votes today, with the Pro-
gressive Party taking the heavier hit.
But here comes the kicker. By far the
most popular party in Iceland today is the
Pirate Party, which by themselves would
receive around 30% of the votes, as much
as both government parties combined.
They currently have three MPs (out of a
total of 63), and, if elections were held to-
day, they would probably be heading the
next government.
In Iceland as well as Britain, conser-
vative parties hold the reins and the left
is in a rut. But voters are much more flex-
ible than they used to be, and it seems
that the mantle of opposition is passing
from the older, established parties to
newer, more dynamic ones. Rather than a
return to the status quo, it seems that the
post-collapse era in politics just might be
entering a new and exciting phase.
Words by Valur Gunnarsson
Photo by DV/ Sigtryggur Ari
Two things of note happened in the United Kingdom on
May 7. One of them, as you may have heard, is that the
Conservatives were re-elected, and this time with an ab-
solute majority.
What Can
The Recent
British Elections
Teach Us About
Icelandic Politics?
However, all is
not as it seems.
Icelanders in gen-
eral still feel deeply
frustrated after the
economic collapse.
By Paul Fontaine
NEWS
IN
BRIEF
he sent them. While the EU has in-
sisted a simple letter isn’t going to
cut it, Gunnar Bragi told reporters
that it was “not practical” to put
the matter up for parliamentary
vote. Why? Because last time, he
said, the measure didn’t pass. So I
guess we can take “not practical” to
mean “not likely to go my way if put
to a vote.”
Perhaps more hotly contested
than whaling is the idea of Iceland
joining the majority of European
countries that change their clocks
in the winter. A parliamentary
proposal to set the clocks back by
one hour in late autumn is current-
ly stuck in committee, and commit-
tee members have heard testimony
from practically every interest
group in the country, including
sleep researchers, Icelandair, and
the Golf Association of Iceland. On
the one hand, changing the clocks
will mean waking up to daylight
later into the winter than usual. On
the other hand, it also means com-
ing home from work or school in
darkness earlier than usual. Quite
the conundrum.
It’s not easy being one of the
least-trusted politicians in the
country, like our Minister of Fi-
nance Bjarni Benediktsson, who
has repeatedly been flipped off in
public, mostly by a long-haired guy
who drives bus #12. Bjarni recount-
ed his encounters with the finger-
happy bus driver on a recent radio
show and said that other members
of the general public have also at
times been prone to give him the
finger “for unknown reasons,” or
unknown to Bjarni, anyway.