Siv Jensen, the 41-year-old leader of Norway's Progress Party, is something of a curiosity in socialist-inclined Scandinavia.

Her parliamentary office in Oslo sports a bust of former U.S. president Ronald Reagan and a small Israeli flag. She brags that her chief political hero is former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher.

"I think she is one of the toughest politicians ever," Ms. Jensen, who has been dubbed a "Norwegian Thatcher," told the National Post this week, as she toured Toronto after attending an international conference in Ottawa on anti-Semitism.

"She handled some serious reform work in Britain. She may not have been popular at the time, but her reforms still stand."

A breakthrough politician in her own right, who came within a whisker of seizing power in Norway's September 2009 elections, Ms. Jensen appears poised to transform politics in her homeland.

With 41 seats in Norway's 169-seat parliament, she heads the country's second-largest party and led the Progress Party to winning its highest percentage of votes ever --22.9%.

She recently changed her formal party title, from the more male-oriented "foreman" to "leader." But, more importantly, she intends to overhaul Norway's cradle-to-the-grave welfare system.

"We are a classical liberal party that is very much in favour of market mechanisms," she said.

"I think those values are applauded by a substantial number of people. They are sick and tired of politicians taking more and more of their salaries in taxes and then redistributing them for whatever reason.

"The problem with this is you make people so dependent on donations through budgets that you end up unable to think for yourself. I want these people to be free, to make their own decisions, to take more control of their own lives. That means they have to take more control of their own income as well."

It is a message that resonates with voters weary of high taxes and declining social services. But it's also a message that has shattered the old politics of Europe, which used to be split between a conservative Christian democratic right and the social democratic left.

Europe has experienced its biggest shakeup since the collapse of communism with a surge of support for right-wing political parties such as the National Front in France, the Northern League in Italy, Geert Wilders's Dutch Freedom Party in the Netherlands, the Swiss People's Party in Switzerland and Hungary's Jobbik Movement for a Better Hungary.

Last month, the far-right Sweden Democrats, a populist, anti-immigration party with neo-Nazi roots, garnered an unexpected 5.7% of the vote in national elections, winning 20 seats in parliament for the first time.

While most new right-wing parties are manifestations of local economic discontent, they share a perceived loss of national identity and an anger over immigrants and outsiders who threaten established cultures.

Ms. Jensen has earned a reputation for taking a hard-nosed stance on immigration. She has demanded immediate curbs to limit immigration to no more than 1,000 people a year and advocates tough new measures to force new immigrants to integrate more fully into Norwegian society.

It should be easy to revoke the citizenship of immigrants who defy Norwegian laws, she said.

"We need to be better at integrating the immigrant population," she insisted. "I want Norway to be a free country--where everybody has the right to free speech, to experience democracy and is not afraid, where women have the same rights as a man."

Norway, a small country of about 4.6 million people, is reeling under immigration from Muslim countries such as Pakistan, Iraq, Bosnia, Somalia and Turkey.

Foreign-born immigrants now account for about 10% of its population.

"In Oslo, the capital, now, almost 25% of the population is foreign-born. And in many schools, you will find 95% non-ethnics and, of course, that creates disturbances, problems and debates. Of course, we have problems with integration," Ms. Jensen said.

"There are demands for not wanting to adapt to the mainstream society. They don't want to stick to Norwegian law. Some argue that they want to implement shariah laws. In schools, children are prevented by their parents from participating in gymnastics or swimming because there are other children there.

"We have forced circumcision going on, forced marriages. We have equality in Norway, but for many young women from certain countries, they don't experience it. We would like them to."

In last year's election, Ms. Jensen received a groundswell of support when she objected to government attempts to accommodate Muslim religious sensitivities and traditions by permitting female police to wear the hijab.

She angrily warned Norway was facing "sneak-Islamization" and accused the other political parties of being cowardly and ignoring the problem.

She has branded radical Islam, a "dark and scary ideology" and declared its defeat "the most important fight of our time."

"We are not going to allow special demands from any single group in society," Ms. Jensen promised voters. "We will enforce Norwegian law and Norwegian rules."

The Progress Party's fortunes have soared along with its tough anti-immigrant rhetoric.

In the 2005 election, the party's television ads showed a long-haired youth in a hooded sweat suit, pointing a gun at viewers.

A caption beneath the picture read simply, "The perpetrator is of foreign origin!!"

At the time, Statistics Norway had compared crime rates and ethnicity and concluded non-Western immigrants committed twice as many crimes as native Norwegians.

But Ms. Jensen insists you can't "win election in Norway on this issue [immigration] alone." Health care, infrastructure spending and schooling are the main issues people really worry about, she said.

Still, strong, forceful leadership is important and she has developed a Thatcher-like reputation for firmness in the 13 years she has been in the Norwegian parliament. She wasted no time castigating the current Norwegian government for being the first in the world to officially recognize Hamas' hold on Gaza, saying, "You don't negotiate with terrorists."

Two years ago, her party was the only one in Norway to publicly support Israel during its invasion of Gaza in December 2008. In interviews, she has recalled being in Sderot in Israel when it was bombed.

The Progress Party also advocates abolishing development aid to the Third World, saying most of the money is spent on "arms and luxury goods" for corrupt elites.

Tax relief tops the party agenda. It wants lower income taxes, lower alcohol taxes, lower taxes on cars and more money for pensioners, police and care for the elderly.

It also favours more oil exploration in the Arctic, to offset dwindling oil and gas reserves in the North Sea, and it questions the need for measures to combat climate change, dismissing predictions of global warming as unreliable.

Party members, who oppose capital punishment, also support proposals to make euthanasia legal in Norway, saying the terminally ill should be allowed to end their lives under controlled circumstances involving at least two doctors.

"The hallmark of a free society is individual liberty," Ms. Jensen said. "Individual liberty is a fundamental requirement for human progress and prosperity."