Progress Party (Denmark)

Progress Party (Denmark)

The Progress Party (Danish: Fremskridtspartiet) is a political party in Denmark, which was founded in 1972. Its founder, the former lawyer Mogens Glistrup, gained huge popularity in Denmark after he appeared on Danish television, showing that he paid 0% in income tax. The party was placed on the right of the political spectrum, as it supported political and economic liberalism, believed in radical tax cuts (including removing the income tax altogether), and also vowed to cut government spending. An example is the suggestion to replace the entire department of defence with an answering machine with the recorded message "we surrender" in Russian. In the late 1970s, its agenda was "the gradual abolition of income tax, the disbandment of most of the civil service, the abolition of the diplomatic service and the scrapping of 90% of all legislation."

The party entered the Danish parliament after the 1973 Landslide Election, where it immediately became the second largest party. After this the party gradually decreased in voter support, and when some of its leading members broke out and established the more moderate Danish People's Party in 1995, the party soon fell out of parliament altogether.