1. immigration, borders

And did Breivik play a role?

In the recent local elections in Norway the main effect appears to have been a large movement of voters from the ugly to the conservative party. I have wondered if this would spill over to the Danish election.

Sweden's finest (and perhaps only) collaborative, leftist e-newspaper Synapze.se

1. The ugly party and the Liberals tried their scary-darkie routines, but an economic depression has a way of focusing people's attention on the unemployment numbers. The Conservatives tried to pretend they don't have a policy about it, because their policy is incompatible with that of the ugly party so every time they talk about it they remind the voters that the ugly party has a firm grip on their balls. A and F made the tactical decision to promise to maintain the status quo, while the Social Liberals did their usual schtick with pretending to be on the left by being in favour of human rights as if this made their right-wing economic policy somehow less odious. (It is a sad commentary on our times that this is grounds for summary exclusion from any viable right-wing coalition - and an even sadder commentary on our times that it's a significant point of contention with a left-wing one.)

2. Not that I am aware of. Nobody likes to talk energy policy, because nobody wants to tell the voters that we'll be a lot poorer in just a few years when the North Sea carbohydrate production falls off a cliff.

3. I didn't follow enough details to know the status of the Fehmern connection, but from what I can tell it has enough bureaucratic inertia behind it by now that it will probably happen. Nobody wants to talk about the state of the rail net, because everybody shares some of the blame for the shitty condition it's in.

4. What's there to talk about? The only people who are not firmly Atlanticist are Ø and F. F was busy getting married to A, and a row over NATO is... not conducive to that process. Ø has more interesting things to talk about, what with the whole "economic meltdown" thing going on. There was one interesting episode when it became clear that Denmark is going to recognise the Republic of Palestine if it comes to a UN vote. But that's the only foreign policy "discussion" I've seen.