Lev Lafayette's journal

I posted this on libertarianism, but I suppose I could also jot it down here.

I tend to feel the basic tactical problem with the Swedish Pirate Party is that it's a single-issue party. It's incredibly unclear what it has to say on practically every other hot topic on the table, which in turn suggests that everything aside from its particular bailiwick is either going to be completely random, or (in the European parliament) will follow the Green party line. Voting for them in European elections, for the most part, can thus be almost indistinguishable from simply voting Green.

Let's assume for a moment the Pirates get into the Swedish parliament, and want to do something other than shout and flail their arms. They'll naturally want to get into government. But you need two things to do that -- the numbers to make a difference, and something to offer the other parties. At first glance it would seem that a party without a platform would be a fine partner, because they might be expected to yield in most issues, those presumably being unimportant to them. It's doubtful that would happen in practice, legislators being people, and people tending to have opinions about things. So in reality the Pirate Party in its current incarnation would just represent a wild card: a shamble of opinions nobody can anticipate.

Add to this that the absolute only thing that they are interested in is unlikely to gather too many plaudits from either the SAP or the four Alliance for Sweden parties, what you have there right now is a party extremely likely to be excluded into the opposition for all time, bar some sort of internal reform that will make it fall in line with the tastes of the major parties. (And specifically the SAP.)