[ISL] "Iceland Shows What Beats Populist Parties: Growth and Jobs"

[rfmcdonald]

Bloomberg's Omar Valdimarsson shares arguments that the failure of the Pirate Party to win the Icelandic elections has much to do with the ability of conventional economics and politics to deliver.

The man who probably will be Iceland’s next prime minister says he knows how to deal with the global wave of populism that’s threatening the established order: Deliver plenty of economic growth and jobs.

Bjarni Benediktsson, the 46-year-old leader of the conservative Independence Party, on Sunday emerged as the big winner in the nation’s snap election. The populist Pirate Party, which had led in some polls even though it is only four years old, largely failed to live up to its hype. In a year where the British people voted to leave the European Union and political outsider Donald Trump is the Republican nominee for president, Icelanders were persuaded to vote for the status quo.

“We just took a stand against populist ideas,” Benediktsson said in an interview Sunday in Reykjavik. “What we’ve been saying lately is, don’t overspend, don’t over-promise, just keep your way when things are going well. They were calling for us to push the refresh button and we said, ‘Well, there’s no need to.”’

Even so, Benediktsson, finance minister in the outgoing government, will need to use all his negotiating skills to put together a viable majority. Due to the governing Progressive Party’s poor performance in Saturday’s vote -- it only retained eight of the 19 seats won in 2013 -- the next coalition will necessarily have to be expanded to at least one more party in a country where the center is losing ground.