It is entirely possible to survive as a minor party in Denmark - although less so than it has been. When I originally wrote the post, I did not want to get into a major exposition on Danish domestic policy and political parties since it was getting quite long and elaborate enough already. But since the subject has come up, let's take a brief tour:

On the left wing, we have - if we stretch the definition of 'left wing' a bit - three parties: The Socialists. The Popular Socialists and the Social Democrats. For various domestic reasons, the Socialists do not currently seem like a viable party at the moment, which leaves us with the Popular Socialists and the Social Democrats.

Then we have the right-wing bloc composed of - from left to right - the Liberals, the Conservatives and New Alliance (essentially a bought-and-paid-for attempt by rich biznizmen to inject Reagan-style voodoo economics into Danish politics, from which they have been thankfully absent for the last decade or so).

Lastly there are two parties, the Danish Popular Party and the Social Liberals who are aligned with the right-wing and left-wing blocs, respectively, but cannot really be counted as belonging there in any meaningful sense - the fact that they are aligned in that way is more of a historical artifact.

So, if you're a leftist, you basically have the choice between the Popular Socialists and the Social Democrats. That means that you can impose one (1) absolute constraint on your choice of party. That constraint is not going to be EU policy.

If you're in the rightist bloc, you've got a bit more choice - at least if you consider the Conservatives a long-term viable party, something I'm not entirely sure I do. But the fundamental picture is the same - Union policy has to be either second or third (after fiscal and taxation policy, of course) on your list of priority policy areas to even be in the running when it comes to selecting party.

And I usually think that we have a rather diverse political spectrum...

- Jake

If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.