The Rise of Iceland’s Pirates

The National Interest asks if Iceland will fall to pirates:

Probably one of the most interesting items to emerge from the Panama Papers is the rise of the Pirates. Sadly we are not talking about a gang of hirsute, garishly dressed and rum-soaked privateers looking for Spanish gold along the sun-dotted shipping lanes of the Caribbean. In this case, those sailing under the black flag are a relatively well-dressed and non-rum-stinking group of legislators whose zone of action is Iceland’s sixty-one-member parliament. Indeed, with elections looming on the horizon sometime in autumn, the Pirates of Iceland may become the government.

Why do we care about the Pirates? Although Iceland is small country (with fewer than one million people) and what happens there is not necessarily going to move markets, the rise of the Pirates fits a larger pattern of politics observed throughout much of Europe, the United States and Brazil: public discontent with the political establishment and a still deep suspicion of the links between bankers and politicians. As Wolfgang Piccoli, co-president of Teneo Intelligence in London observed: “The Panama papers are yet another symptom, rather than root cause, of a growing disconnect between elites and their voters. . . Even if the Panama story were not to drag on for too long, the fundamental crisis of diminishing trust in the political establishment is likely to continue.”