Denmark's far-right Peoples Party refuses to join coalition government. Wants to criticize from
outside.
Thorning-Schmidts Social Democrats won last weeks elections and took 47 seats on a higher proportion of the vote, but her coalition partners suffered badly and she quit as party leader on election night.
The main election winner was the populist DPP, which became Denmarks second largest party with more than 21% of the vote. But despite attempts by the Liberals to coax him into a coalition, DPP leader Kristian Thulesen Dahl has opted to wield the partys influence from the sidelines and prop up the Liberals on a vote-by-vote basis.
Danish rightwinger Kristian Thulesen Dahl rides high on populist tide
Dahls calculation is that this will enable the DPP to remain untainted by unpopular decisions. The far-right Progress party in Norway has seen its popularity slump since it joined a coalition with the Conservatives in 2013.
While the DPP has pushed to the reintroduction of strict border controls to prevent movement of migrants, Rasmussen pledged on Friday to maintain Denmarks status as a member of the Schengen group of nations which has no internal borders.
As I understand it, the Dutch Liberal Party is a center-right party in the Dutch context. It is to the right of the Social Democrats but not as far right as the Danish Peoples Party.