New Alliance's Collapse
Most of my readers (if I have any) have probably never heard of New Alliance in Danish politics. So I'd like to tell you their story, because it is fun.
Naser Khader is well known public image in Danish politics. Partly because he is Muslim, and gather some hype around him.
Naser Khader used to be a member of the Radical Left (B) party. Khader became especially famous in Denmark during Muhammad cartoon controversy when he made a group called "Moderate Muslims" in a response to the Danes' discontent over Muslims, because they were burning our flag in their streets.
While the group may seem like a good thing, it mainly remained PR. And the group never managed to pull off anything significant as the controversy died out by itself...
But that did not stop Khader in making himself appear public as much as possible. Khader, like most people in Denmark, was getting tired of the Danish People's Party (DF)'s almost veto right in Danish politics. You see, while DF is not part of the government, it is the support party of it. Without the mandates of DF, the government cannot effectively get any laws through. And thus the government wishes to avoid DF disagreeing with them, thus at times bending over for their needs.
So Khader did what he thought had to be done, B was simply not good enough, so he founded a new party, named "New Alliance" (NA). Its purpose: to get DF's veto right gone. Now, I can understand why he would like that, but founding a new party? Was that really necessary?
Indeed, while early opinion polls should 16 mandates for his party in its early days, people soon realised that beside the DF battling, the party did not really have any political issues.
And when it did make one about 40% flat income tax, people were again discontent with its lack of thought. One of their candidates even suggested that they should use one region of Denmark as a "test area" for this new flat tax. How would you feel about paying more tax so someone else can pay less?
Their display were horrible during the election campaign up til the elections 13th of November last year. They could not make anything clear to the public, no one were sure who they were going to point for prime minister and they were talking about all sorts of formalities they wanted through with the prime minister before they would appoint him.
Needless to say, they came in with 5 mandates. Lucky them. Sadly for them, it was not enough to get the government and DF off its majority. And thus their mission was somewhat unsuccessful. But to NA's luck, one of the mandates from the Conservative party (K) (which is part of the government) left it in protest. And with her, the majority of the government was gone. Indeed, after the last election, they had relied on one mandate majority.
So when the prime minister needed the new asylum agreement in place last week, he invited Khader up. What happened at that meeting remains confidential, but before it Khader was against the agreement, and when he came out, he was for it. And since NA seems to be trailing with less than 4 mandates (minimum requirement for getting into parliament), some suggested the prime minister threaten him with a possible new election.
Be that as it may, NA then declared itself as a right-wing party, until then it had claimed it self as a middle-wing party. And even though its opinion polls were low, they became lower. And thus one of its founders dropped out.
Now why am I discussing all this? Because it is hilarious. They base their party programme on something almost trivial, especially not needing an entire new party. And I agree with DF's leader when she criticised NA for that, despite I rarely agree with her. And with all its hype during its creation, it just shows that this man is just not confident for it. He is good at being himself, but not good at being the leader of a party.
NA's days are already counted. I have a very difficult time believing they will be able to pick up the pieces from this, and they won't get reelected into parliament.
I hope I managed to entertain you somewhat.