Iceland’s Pirate Party’s popularity is growing, with the spin-off from Sweden’s Pirates top of the country’s recent opinion polls.
Recent months has seen a huge swing in public opinion in the North Atlantic nation, with the centre right government which has been in power almost entirely since the end of the Second World War falling in popularity.
And with a general election scheduled for 2017, changes in ideology in the country could have come at a perfect time for the Pirates.
Party leader Birgitta Jonsdottir described the people as the system in a TEDx talk held earlier in June, a comment that was regarded as taking a swipe at the decentralised principles of the current government.
It remains unknown as to whether the rise in popularity is simply a current trend of something that could prove long lasting, but polls by MMR and Gallup have placed the party on 35 and 34 per cent of the vote respectively.
Furthermore, Icelandic newspaper Frettabladid worked out in March that if the country held an election at the time, the Pirates would have won 14 parliamentary seats – making it the second biggest group.