A Perussuomalaiset nightmare and the shadow of the Danish People’s Party

Migrant Tales wrote Monday a piece about the catastrophic election result of the Danish People’s Party (DPP) this month and why the result sent shivers up the Perussuomalaiset’s (PS)* spine.

In early June, the DPP saw its popularity nosedive by 12.4 percentage points to 8.7% (16 MPs) from 21.1%(37 MPs) previously.

The PS and DPP are cosy ideological allies.

Certainly, the result in Denmark shows that populist anti-immigration parties are immortal and vulnerable and can be beaten in their own Islamophobic game.

Another matter it shows is that issues like climate change, which explains the rise in popularity of the Greens, is taking over immigration as a top concern of voters.

Islamophobia and xenophobia have their limits, too. You can tighten immigration policy to the extreme but where will it take you? Is the final phase using boxcars to transport people to concentration camps?

It may well be that immigration in the next parliamentary election in Finland in 2022, which is a pet topic of the PS, may be taken over by climate change.

If I were a member of the PS, I would be worried, very worried about the future of the party.

Doesn’t the PS deny climate change?

This will not go down well with the voters.

* The Perussuomalaiset (PS) party imploded on June 13, 2017, into two factions, the PS and New Alternative, which is now called Blue Reform. In the last parliamentary election, Blue Reform has wiped off the Finnish political map when they saw their numbers in parliament plummet from 18 MPs to none. A direct translation of Perussuomalaiset in English would be something like “basic” or “fundamental Finn.” Official translations of the Finnish name of the party, such as Finns Party or True Finns, promote in our opinion nativist nationalism and racism. We, therefore, at Migrant Tales prefer to use in our postings the Finnish name of the party once and after that the acronym PS.