PIA KJÆRSGAARD

A milestone was reached today when Pia Kjærsgaard, founder and hitherto the only leader of the right-wing Danish People's Party, handed over the party Chairmanship to her long-standing lieutenant Kristian Thulesen Dahl.

The DPP rose from the ashes of the Fremskridtsparti ("Progress Party"), an essentially one issue (lower taxes) protest party founded in the 1970's by a clever tax lawyer. After a particularly chaotic party conference in 1995, Ms. Kjærgaard and three fellow MPs walked out, and decided to set up on their own. Scarred by the earlier experience, the new party's creed has been, and still is, iron internal discipline. I do not like at all the DPP's anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, anti-foreign, "little Denmark" policies, but you have to admire the fact that they are relentlessly "on-message". The result has been 17 years of an almost continual rise in opinion polls and seats in the Folketing; and although they have never been formally in Government, they were hugely influential during the 2001-11 reign of the previous right-of-centre coalition. The latest survey gives them roughly 15% of the vote, enough in their eyes to be able to demand a share of Government at the next general election.

Much of this success is due to Ms. Kjærsgaard's political skills. Like Margaret Thatcher in another country, she manages to portray herself as a typical Danish housewife saying common sense things that supposedly more educated politicians daren't. As I say, I disagree with a lot of those things. But plenty of Danes think she is on the right track.

So what now? Mr. Thulesen Dahl was one of those three colleagues back in 1995, a whippersnapper in those days, and still only in his early 40's today. He knows the party inside out, and has long been the heir apparent. But he's a very different type of person, the technocratic brains supporting Ms. Kjærsgaard's political instincts and presentational skills. Will DPP voters, many of them pensioners, warm to rational arguments rather than gut feelings? Only time will tell, but one thing is certain; she will be a hard act to follow.    

Walter Blotscher