Iceland Pirate Party

Iceland is going under some serious political change.

The country's Pirate Party, formed under three years ago, is now leading one political poll.

The Pirate Party idea started originally in Sweden as an organisation advocating direct democracy, freedom of information, anti-corruption and net neutrality.

Since then, parties with the same name and similar values have popped up around the world.

Iceland's Pirate Party are already the first Pirate Party in the world to gain a Parliamentary seat.

In comparison, the UK Pirate Party managed an average of 0.34% of the General Election 2010 vote in the nine constituencies they were standing in.

The UK Pirate Party is not as popular as the Icelandic one

The Pi­rate Party in Iceland would re­ceive 23.9% of votes and the Indepen­dence Party would come sec­ond with 23.4%, polling suggests.

Until now, the Independence Party had been the party which polled highest for the ENTIRE HISTORY OF ICELAND AS AN INDEPENDENT COUNTRY.

The reason for this upturn in popularity appears to echo the reasons given much closer to home about a distrust of existing politicians:

"To be completely honest: I don’t know why we enjoy so much trust," MP Birgitta Jonsdottir, the captain of the Pirate Party, told Visir.

"We are all just as surprised, thankful and take this as a sign of mistrust towards conventional politics.

“Traditional politics have not shown progress and people are tired of waiting for change. It is good that people are rejecting corruption and hubris.

“We take this with humility. This must be a clear message to the government, especially to The Independence Party (Sjálfstæðisflokkurinn) and their arbitrary governance.”