The Eurosceptic Danish People's Party (dpp) cannot be blamed for Schadenfreude over the European election. The dpp's leading candidate, the youthful Morten Messerschmidt, topped the poll and doubled the party's seats in the European Parliament to four; his 465,758 personal votes smashed a record set a decade ago by a former prime minister, Poul Nyrup Rasmussen. who once castigated the dpp as "dishonourable". The election leaves Denmark's mainstream political parties in a state of disarray. The ruling Social Democratic Party as well as the main opposition party lost one seat each. The coalition's decline can be ascribed to austerity fatigue, but the opposition's collapse is largely due to missteps by the leader of the Liberal Party, Lars Lokke Rasmussen.
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