Iceland boasts full employment, a peaceful society and a well-functioning welfare state -- yet voters are so frustrated with the political establishment they're ready to elect the Pirate Party to power. The country's legislative elections are still a year away, but the Pirate Party, started by WikiLeaks activist Birgitta Jonsdottir just over three years ago, has enjoyed enormous backing, garnering a whopping 41.8 percent of voter support in a January 28 poll.
A libertarian movement campaigning for more transparency in politics, Internet freedoms and copyright reform, the Pirate Party is modelled on a Swedish namesake founded in 2006. Its meteoric rise has even surprised members of the party, which entered parliament in 2013.
The party's inexperience doesn't seem to put Icelanders off -- rather the contrary. Residents of this large island in the North Atlantic appear ready to turn their backs on the politicians whose complicity with the financial elite led to the spectacular 2008 collapse of the country's banking system. From afar, it's hard to see why Icelanders would be so fed up with the establishment. Unemployment at the end of 2015 was an enviable 1.9 percent, and purchasing power was boosted by generous wage increases. Income inequality in Iceland is among the lowest in the world, and the end of the finance bubble helped reduce the gap further. The country's high life expectancy, 83 years, is proof of a good health system.
The country doesn't have much crime to speak of, and as a result the justice system was able to focus on the trials of the bankers responsible for the financial crisis. Almost 30 of them have been convicted. But a recurring theme in the political debate has been frustration over tax cuts for the rich introduced by the centre-right government.
The Pirate Party sees the cuts as the fruit of an elitist and opaque political system which has rarely been reformed since Iceland gained independence from Denmark in 1944. Under a left-wing government from 2009-2013, Iceland launched a spectacular project to reform its constitution through crowdsourcing. A new basic law was drafted by 25 ordinary citizens and included proposals made on Twitter and Facebook.
