Danish populist anti-migrant party dissolved in apparent bid to reduce centre-right parties

Denmark’s New Right Party will be dissolved in an apparent bid to reduce the number of the centre-right parties as its MPs could join other right-wing parliamentary groups, party founder Pernille Vermund announced on Wednesday.

The atmosphere was tense in the Danish parliament on Wednesday as the founder and leader of the anti-migrant populist New Right Party (Nye Borgerlige), Pernille Vermund, announced that the party would close its parliamentary group and be dissolved.

According to Vermund, her reason for dissolving the party is that there are currently too many centre-right parties in parliament.

“If we are to rebuild centre-right Denmark, we need to gather all the good forces — but in slightly fewer centre-right parties”, she said, in an announcement that surprised many, including her party.

The New Right is a national conservative and right-wing populist political party with strict positions on migration issues. The party namely wants Denmark to withdraw from the UN Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and expel all immigrants who are living in temporary residence or who are unable to support themselves.

The party is also largely critical of the EU, as apparent with their call for a referendum on the country’s EU membership.

“The centralisation and bureaucratisation that the EU has undergone since the mid-1980s has destroyed many of the positive perspectives of the cooperation. We will therefore ensure that the Danes have a referendum on EU membership,” New Right’s manifesto reads.

The leading candidate for New Right in the upcoming European Parliament elections, Martin Henriksen, was unaware of the party’s dissolution, calling it “very strange”.

“I would have liked to have been informed. It is very logical. But I understand that many people were not,” he told Ritzau.

New Right has only two members in the Danish parliament: Vermund herself and MP Kim Edberg.

The party gained six MPs in the election in November last year, but a real meltdown shortly after the election resulted in the parliamentary group being reduced to three, which might have played a role in the decision to disband the party.

“When we founded the New Right Party eight years ago, there were four centre-right parties. Today there are seven,” Vermund wrote, adding that with two active seats, her group risks not only breaking itself up but also being the one to block a centre-right majority and thus a centre-right prime minister.

Rebalancing act

Vermund has made it clear that she wants to join another centre-right party but has yet to say which one.

At this stage, it could be the right-wing Conservative People’s Party (which sits with the European People’s Party in the EU Parliament), the Liberal Alliance or, on the far right, the Danish People’s Party (Identity and Democracy) and the Danish Democrats.

Before Vermund founded the New Right, she was a member of the Conservative Party, and if she finds that she belongs there again, the door is “not necessarily closed”, said political spokeswoman Mette Abildgaard.

“She is welcome to contact us, and then we will have to enter into a dialogue”, she said, adding that “if you have just been the leader of another party that has a different view of the climate agenda, that has a different attitude to respecting international conventions, you need to have a dialogue before you open the door,” she said.

Even within the ruling centre-left coalition, Denmark’s Liberal Party (Renew Europe) chairman and Defence Minister Troels Lund Poulsen announced he would accept Vermund as a new party colleague.

“I know Pernille Vermund well and have worked closely with her when I was finance spokesman. She is a skilful and credible politician, so she has a good future ahead of her,” he said.

However, he has yet to speak to Vermund, whose decision is expected to be announced soon.

(Charles Szumski | Euractiv.com)