In April this year Finland went to the polls — and the right wing populist party, the True Finns, gained almost 20 per cent of the vote. This upset almost 30 years of consensus politics, and shows an upsurge in anti-European Union, anti-immigration, socially conservative values.
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/rearvision/stories/2011/3258960.htm
This debate is, to say the least, timely. Perhaps at no other time in our recent history has the role of parties, their ‘inner’ workings and the power of apparatchiks been so under the spotlight. It used to be that politics was a matter of principle, where the major parties were committed to political ideals and the public good…but were they really?