Talk Elections

For discussion of issues regarding the Nordic countries Norway, Finland, Denmark, Iceland, Greenland and the Faroe Islands.

Iceland will join first, followed in about a generation by Norway, after the oil and gas from the North Sea fields runs out entirely in about twenty years (http://www.utility-exchange.co.uk/north-sea-oil-gas-may-run-out-in-just-17-years-15002/).  

For the question, Iceland probably will, Norway probably won't.

But on another topic (now that we have a Dane with us) how is Helle doing as prime minister?

Right now badly PR-wise, the government go from bad media case after another. Some blame SF/SPP because they didn't want to let their congestion charge go. But I blame the Social Liberal because they had been such assholes in the negotiation, and didn't want to let SPP get even any of their symbolic policies through*, so they had to fight for the few they got, even when they turned into disasters.

*Reminding us all, that the reason DPP has had such excellent results the last decade, was just as much because people was really tired of the Social Liberals arrogance and obnoxious smugness as anything to do with immigrants, and I write this as someone agreeing with the Social Liberals on most policies, imagine how people disagreeing with them feel!  

It's a bit depressing that that would be the poll question for a Great Nordic thread...

I hope for their sake they will be sensible enough to stay out, but who knows. I guess we would benefit marginally from having some more decent countries in the EU though.

Considering that they get many of the costs of EU membership without all of the benefits through EFTA, EEA, and other trade agreements, and provided that the EU survives it's current crisis in good form, I do believe that eventually both countries will join. I also believe that a successfully concluded negotiation regarding fisheries may be instrumental in Iceland joining sooner rather than later.

Eh...they're nowhere near the costs. They pay a couple of hundred million euros to the EU per year, whereas Sweden pays around 3 billion euros per year.

And, of course, they retain the possibility to keep their sovereignty.

Well, costs are more than just money after all, and I don't know that they really do keep their sovereignty. Have you seen this report? (http://www.europautredningen.no/english/)

No, but looking at it I've heard most of that analysis before. What costs did you mean then?

I'm well aware that Norway in practice goes along with most EU decisions, but their national democratic process can still in theory decide over these things (and leave, for example).

I was thinking along the lines of having to adopt or follw certain laws or regulations. Some people could construe that as a cost.

And since they do go along with most decisions, wouldn't it be better to be on the inside where they can actually help shape the EU? And theoretically I suppose if they really got fed up, who could stop them from leaving? Technically Greenland withdrew from the EC, after all (I understand the EC is different from the EU that it became, but I think when we are talking about a country leaving the EU that has yet to join we move far into the theoretical).

1. They also withdrew de facto. EU decisions don't apply to Greenland. All countries are free to leave as they are sovereign nations.

2. The question is: How much can small countries actually influence the EU?

Sure, that can be a cost. Then again they do have greater freedom to negotiate the terms than a country subjected to the EU treaties.

There are two problems with this idea of shaping the EU. The first is that a tiny country like Norway can do this to any great extent. The second is that it conflates the Norwegian people with their EU representatives.

It might allow Norwegian government officials to influence the EU, but since it removes pretty much all democratic accountability, it effectively reduces the influence of the Norwegian people to a bare minimum.

That's the same problem with your other point as well. The government will never want to leave the EU and the people won't be able to make them. Besides, leaving the EU has a lot more negative connotations than breaking up some treaty or renegotiating some terms.

Swedish Minister of Defence Resigns

The Swedish Minister of Defence, Sten Tolgfors, resigned today following a government scandal which broke early in March where the Swedish DoD in secret helped Saudi Arabia build a weapons factory. Weapons produced in the factory has proved to have been sold to and used by oppressing regimes against protestors in their country.

Tolgfors has during the investigation of the affair been caught lying and conceiling information, causing several opposition politicians to call for him to resign.

   

Norway has no reason to join the EU right now, and by the time they have a reason, the EU could be considerably different.

Any long term effect in voters perception of the government IYO? (bump on the road or serious business...)

I don't think it's a big thing for the government. It kind of feeds the narrative of the government being corrupt though.

Are there normally this many political scandals in Sweden?

Hm. Not really, I wouldn't say. But we have more than people expect, I'd say. :P

Since the current government took over in 2006 there has been 6 resignations that can be seen as embarassing for the government.

The trade minister and culture minister both had to resign within a week of getting their positions when it turned out they had not paid the licence fee for their TVs.

The former defence minister resigned in protest due to the cuts of defence spending.

The labour market minister resigned when it came out he had bought sexual services.

The minister for social insurance systems resigned due to heavily criticized reforms of those systems.

And, now this defence minister due to the Saudi thing. That is probably more than the government before. Then again, media scrutiny is a lot higher nowadays than it used to be - politicians used to be able to get away with a lot more.

I'm not sure actually, the Persson cabinet had quite a few as well. Most notably Leila Freivald who resigned twice, once as Minister of Justice, once as Foreign Minister, both times due to scandals.

Haha, yes. And Jan O Karlsson, of course. But beyond that? There is Ylva Johansson and Erik Åsbrink but that is quite a while ago. And Björn Rosengren but I can't even recall if he actually ever had to resign. By then we're up to a decade in time span.

Well, at least in Sweden, ministers do resign when they are involved in scandals... :P

Unless they're certain people, like Carl Bildt or Björn Rosengren. :P

They've been through quite a few but seem to always come out untouched for some reason.

I'm at least mildly amused that Bildt still has a political career.

That might be weird... by Swedish standards. In France party bosses rarely quit even when they've lost any credibility. And sometimes, they get reelected.

I think a political career is not the right term to use here, but otherwise I couldn't agree more. :P

Brighter days for the Swedish left in the oppinion polls. This is probably due to several blunders by the government the past month as well as the new SAP leader who's turned out to be more competent and sympathetic than his last two predecessors.

DEMOSKOP:

M: 29,9%
FP: 5,2%
C: 4,2%
KD: 3,1%

Government: 42,4%

S: 34,1%
MP: 9,5%
V: 6,5%
SD: 6,6%

Opposition: 56,8%


SIFO:

M: 28,7%
FP: 5,9%
C: 4,9%
KD: 3,5%

Government: 43,0%

S: 33,7%
MP: 10,3%
V: 6,1%
SD: 5,2%

Opposition: 55,3%

Wow, the Social Democrats are on a roll again ?

By "on a roll", I obviously mean that they would only get their second-worst post-1920 performance if the election were held today. :P

Truly encouraging news for their Danish comrades, who are on their lowest level since 1898 according to the latest polls ;)

Not sure why it'd be an encouraging sign. The Social Democrats in Sweden and the Danmark are at quite different places at the moment. S rise here is due to factors such as a government people are growing a bit tired off and them finally getting a good leader. In Denmark the Social Democrats are the government, and they still have Helle as their leader.

What does polls look like more exactly? Would an election result in a return of the VCO(I) government or would Helle's coalition manage to cling on? 

I was being ironic :) Both the SDs in DK and Sweden are doing very badly seen in a historical context.
Danish SDs were at 18,5 % in one poll where Venstre (Liberals) were stronger than all  3 government parties together. It is slightly better now, but not much. If an election were held now we would get a right wing government. Probably a single party Venstre government, since Conservatives are doing really badly and Venstre doesn't really need them. The Danish Peoples Party (O) was never in government - just supporters - so no VCO to return to.

Bump

There has been some general discussion of Danish politics on the international elections board, which would be a more appropriate here, so I am bumping this one.

I'd like to summarise the political developments in Sweden for the last months:


Zzzzzzzzz...

The 52 year old MP from the Socialist Peoples Party Anette Vilhelmsen is elected chairman of the party with a 66 % majority over the leaderships candidate 29 year old Health Minister Astrid Krag. A clear victory for the left wing in the party.
The election of Vilhelmsen spells trouble for PM Helle Thorning-Schmidt and her pragmatic/neo liberal (take your pick) reform course.
The SPP is polling at 5,2% at the moment. The lowest result in 30 years... Room for improvement.
New SPP ministers to be appointed tomorrow. All 6 current ministers supported Krag and several of them will probably be axed by the new leader.

The SPP realignment story continues.

27 year old wonderboy and architecht behind the partys "pragmatic" right wing turn Thor Møger Petersen is fired as Minister of Taxation and replaced with 62 year old former party chairman Holger K. Nielsen from the "traditionalist" left wing of the party.
Nicknamed "Møgungen" ("the brat") Thor Møger was hated among the middle aged rank and file members from which Vilhelmsen draws her support.

Former Communist party boss turned succesfull publisher and SPP right winger Ole Sohn is fired as Minister of Business and Growth (where he was quite popular with the business community) and replaced with new party chairman Anette Vilhelmsen.

After two days of marathon negotiations first with prime minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt and today with the leader of the dominant Social Liberals Margrethe Vestager it will be interesting to see if Vilhelmsen has managed to get any concessions from the two other "queens" in the government.

Fun fact. After the election of Vilhelmsen all four party leaders to the "left" are female and all four party leaders to the right are male. Boys against girls in the next election campaign.  

Calling Ole Sohn neoliberal is wrong in so many ways....
How about you drop the Ekstrabladet rhetoric. It is after all the equivalent of the Daily Hatemail.

And then to more serious business. This isn't a realignment, but on one hand at struggle between a more streamlined party understanding and a focus on internal party democracy. Villy Søvndal failed to grasp the dissatisfaction among large and influential parts of the party where it came to the way things were run. The little things like failing to give the dissatisfied a forum to get rid of their frustrations etc.
On the other hand the personality of the two candidates was very important. Astrid Krag failed miserably when it came to likeability and ran a bad campaign whereas Annette Vilhelmsen presented herself as a much more pleasant person (but weaker on policies) and ran a near perfect campaign.

The biggest losers were the political experts, who presented the election of Astrid Krag as a done deal, again proving that they have few to none reliable sources in SF :D 

Well, maybe we understand different things with the word realignment... I certainly hope for SPPs sake that this is the beginning of at least a minor realignment.

Yeah the pundits got that one  wrong. But in defense of the "experts" it was very hard to predict the outcome with any accuracy because of the large increase in membership in 2007-2009 from 9.500 to 17.000 and lack of knowledge about how many members the party actually had left during the current crisis. The last publicised figure of 15.000 proved wrong and the party only had 12.000 members left. The fact that 40,6% of those chose not to vote at all in a leadership referendum is quite surprising. What is your take on this? Widespread apathy?

I wanted to bet on a Vilhelmsen victory myself based on my knowledge of the feelings among "old" (that is pre-2007) SPP members, but hesitated since I was unsure of how the new members would react.
I think the clear 2/3 victory surprised most SPP members as well.

The consequences of the SPP leadership battle are really showing now. In late January deputy leader Mattias Tesfaye left the SPP to join the Social Democrats. Yesterday political spokesperson Jesper Petersen made the same move, and today MEP Emilie Turunen plus a couple of former MPs, MP candidates, municipial politicians etc. also decided to join the Social Democrats. Add to that that Thor Möger Pedersen was sacked as Minister of Taxation immediately after Vilhelmsen's victory, and has now become a TV host. All of these young politicians belonged to the workerite fraction of the Socialist People's Party, which former leader Villy Søvndal also belongs to. They were the drivers behind the right-wing shift of the party, and disagrees with the new traditionalist line of Annette Vilhelmsen. Foreign Minister Villy Søvndal and Minister of Health Astrid Krag also belongs to the workerite line, but it probably takes quite a bit more to voluntarily leave a Minister post.

The consequences of these people leaving might be quite big. As many of the most prominent workerites have now left, the main drivers for getting SPP into the government are gone as well. So the Traditionalist who were quite reluctant to that move, might now have an easier way of getting their party to leave the government if they find that preferable. The green, europositive wing also supported the shift towards making the party ready for government, but arguably not with the same enthusiasm, and, at least some of them, might be convinced by the advantages of leaving the government.

Ms. Marie Krarup DPP spokesperson on defence matters (and daughter of (in)famous Lutheran minister and former DPP politician Søren Krarup) got herself into trouble after ridiculing Maori ceremonies on her blog following an official visit to NZ by the Danish parliaments defence comitee.

http://pacific.scoop.co.nz/2013/04/danish-mp-apologises-over-calling-powhiri-grotesque-mocking-free-rider-nz-defence/ (http://pacific.scoop.co.nz/2013/04/danish-mp-apologises-over-calling-powhiri-grotesque-mocking-free-rider-nz-defence/)

As representative of a party that goes on and on about how foreigners should respect indigenous Danish customs its a bit hypocritical of her.

She was also dangerously close to being outright racist - which the DPP tries very hard to avoid.

"Krarup detailed her experiences at the Devonport Naval Base as an example of a relinquishing trait of New Zealand:
 
“One could perhaps call it [the marae] cultural annihilation or grotesque multi-cultural worship.”
 
She characterised the naval officers as “beautiful, white-dressed and European looking”, and expressed bewilderment regarding why New Zealanders of European ancestry had to perform a non-European custom to their European guests:
 
“It is a mystery to me that the naval officers could endure both the ceremony and the surroundings.”

(yeah, it must have been hard enduring all those half naked savages...)

The full text in English:

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10876319 (http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10876319)

(its actually not quite as bad as I thought, but still insensitive and rude)

Yes Krarup are a racist (whether other members of DPP are racist can be discussed Krarup and her relative no it can't be discussed), she's also a Bull in a China shop, but the New Zealandic reaction have been positive hilarious (the NZ right; she correct and all foreigners think these things, the NZ left; she should be grateful to see how tradition). I can only thank the Almighty that it was NZ she did it and not a state with a tendency to overreaction (and we couldn't afford to insult). My guess is that Krarup in the future are asked not to join these trips.

I also find it hilarious that it's this the New Zeanders get their panties in a twist over, and not all the much worse thing she wrote. I guess it hit a place which hurt.

What are the differences between the right wing and left wing of the SPP on foreign policy?

There arent any, really. All tough there are a small portion of euro-sceptics on the left wing.
 Its mostly on economic policy and "value issues"  - like immigration and law and order - that they differ. But the present SPP minister of foreign affairs, Villy Søvndal (who is on the right wing), doesnt really follow the party line, but executes the governments (mainly SDs) pro-American line.
But thats mostly because SPP is so marginalized in the government.

With less than 150 days to the next Storting election on the 9th of September Norwegian Labour prime minister Jens Stoltenbergs Red-Green Coalition hasn't had a majority in the polls for a year and Conservative leader Erna Solberg looks like the next prime minister in coalition with the right wing populist/softcore libertarian Progressive Party. PP can celebrate its 40th anniversary knowing that the party's leader Siv Jensen is likely going to be the new minister of finance.

()
Erna Solberg - a woman of substance...

An average of Norwegian polls for April.
 
Labour 27,2 (49)
 
Conservatives 33,0 (56)
 
Progressive Party 16,8 (30)
 
Christian Peoples Party 5,4 (9)
 
Liberals 4,6 ( 8 )
 
Center Party 5,1 (9)
 
Socialist Left 4,4 (7)
 
Reds 1,4 (1)
 
Others 1,9 (0)

Red Green Coalition (Labour - Centre Party - Socialist Left) + Reds = 66
Centrist opposition Liberals - Christian Peoples Party = 17
"Dark Blue" opposition Conservatives + PP = 86

()
Siv Jensen -  laughing at the leftists?

clarence must be summoned here asap.

Yes, a "big gal" with wholesome conservative views must be right up his alley.

She even has a wholesome name... Erna Solberg...

Siv Jensen looks like she enjoys her cigarettes and spray tans.

Which side is more anti-immigration and pro-law and order? The right-wing?  That would be the obvious choice but you can never be too sure.

"Obvious answer is obvious" to quote California Tony.

The right wing in SPP has accepted the SD line on immigration (which is almost identical  to the old VK governments) apart from the "24 year rule", that forbids Danes and foreigners living in Denmark to bring a spouse to the country if they are under 24. They are still more concerned about refugees, though, wanting to give asylum to trafficked women and such.
The SPP right wing has been pretty tough on crime too for a leftist party. But they are still softies compared to DPP and the Liberals (Venstre). And also still more focused on fighting white collar crime and traffickers than the right wing.
Left wing is more "old school" leftist focusing on preventing crime through social programs and being enthusiastic about alternative sentencing etc. They are also more humanistic/principled in their refugee policy.

We have a poster, Jens, who is a member of the SPP maybe you should pm him if you are writing a paper or something, he could give you more accurate answers than I can.

What, are the "Reds (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_%28Norway%29)" near of getting a MP in Norway? Aren't they like old-way dogmatic communists?

Are they getting votes from the most left-wing voters of Socialist Left?

They include a lot of old Maoists and small left socialist groups, but not the Communist Party of Norway (the formerly Soviet loyal commies). Socialist Left has been very pragmatic while in government, so there is room for a "pure" socialist alternative to their left. I am actually surprised they aren't doing better.

Actually, Rødt/ the Red Party hasn't increased their share of the vote at all. Their polling average for last month is at exactly the same as their 2009 result - 1,3%. The reason why some polls are showing them as getting one MP, must be due to them getting/polling slightly more votes  in a county (probably Oslo) where they could win a seat and losing votes in other places, thus getting fewer "wasted" votes.

Yes, its clearly a party that's unable to fill the space offered to it by a left socialist "big brother" forced to be pragmatic as a junior partner in a Labour/Centrist coalition. If you compare it to the similar Danish situation where Enhedslisten/the Red-Green Alliance has been highly successful in attracting disappointed left wingers from the SPP (and SD) the difference is striking.

As I understand it Rødt is more dogmatic than Enhedslisten. Any other reasons why they have failed?

Really? I had the impression in the opposite way.
So the "real" Communist party of Norway isn't any kind of player?

I have only met people from Rød Ungdom and I have the image that they have an active youth wing which is able to attract young people, not as much as the Socialist Ungdom, but still.

No, NKP got 697 votes (0,03%) at the Storting election in 2009.

I'm kind of suprised of the same thing in Finland. The fact that the Left Alliance makes a lot of compromises and really pragmatic policies in the cabinet hasn't resulted in the rise of parties on it's left-side like the Communist Party of Finland. They try to hit us with everything they have but the popular support isn't coming up.

Finland even had a kind of cabinet crisis after the mid-term examination of cabinet program. They choose to lower the corporate tax by 4 percents to 20% (which is lover than the corporate tax in Sweden). At the same time they renewed the taxation of dividends. After the examination the leader of the Left Alliance announced that the cabinet made a mistake and the new dividend taxation is going to open a backdoor in taxation for big corporations. After the other parties first bashed him and stated that what's made is made the cabinet made a patch in the dividend taxation.

The Left Alliance threatened to leave the cabinet if the dividend taxation would be fixed. And even this new "fixed" taxation system is going to be too much to swallow for many of the activists and supporters with the drop in corporate tax.

Left Alliance is going to have a party convention next June and it's going to be interesting because there's a lot of pressure and displeasing on the party's policies in the cabinet.

Enhedslisten are a mix of several difference extreme left political parties going from democratic Euro-socialists to Communists (of all brands) . As such Enhedslisten can't be dodmatic as some parts of it support a democratic revolution and some a violent one.

So, that's the state of the race in Denmark:


()


Is there a big reason for the DPP strength?

This is the coalitions' situation:


()

The main reason is the meltdown of the social democrats. All the people disappointed with the governments fairly righht wing economic policies have got to go somewhere. A lot of people are going to the Red Green Alliance, but there are a lot of people who won't move that fa to the left. So they move to the right instead, probably figuring that the economic policies will be similar but with stricter immigration policies. DPP, being the opportunist that they are, have tried to position themselves to the left of the government on economic issues and they are being rewarded for this. However, the DPP will still support a Venstre government and will likely support that governments economic policies almost regardless of what they are like. Economic issues are not their primary concern - immigration is.

I disagree. DPP will have an interest in acting as a moderator on a Liberal governments economic policies, since being seen as a champion of welfare is their main possibility for growth - they already have the anti-immigration and law & order crowd.
They also have more voters receiving public benefits than any other party, so they cant allow policies that cut too deep in public welfare.

My impression is that the leadership of the party is filled with people still living in the 1970s.

It’s really extraordinary how they have failed to capitalize on the travails of SV. SV have been forced to take part in a lot of decisions that are unpopular with the party’s base, on issues from taxation to immigration and the environment. And yet Rødt has failed utterly to pick up disaffected SV-voters. 

That confirms my impression of Rødt.

Welcome to the forum! Its good to see another Norwegian. We now have 2 Norwegians, 2-3 Finns and 5 Danes among our regular or semi-regular posters, so it should be possible to keep this thread going with regular updates.
 

Thank you. As you probably know we have a general election coming up i Norway this fall, so there should be plenty to discuss.

Yeah, we already have a thread about the election under International elections.
https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=168177.0 (https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=168177.0)

I will look that up!

It can also be noted that for the past 40 years, only one representative from a party to SV's left has been elected to the Norwegian parliament - Rødt's ,then called RV, Erling Folkvord in '93.   One of many reasons for this is that SV  contains large ideological differences, from semi-social democrats to extreme leftists. This electoral history doesn't bode very well for Rødt's chances at establishing themselves as a credble alternative on the left (even though you would have expected their chances to improve with SV's years in government.)

A big problem for the the Party IMO (beside the obvious) is that  they have no prominent  or charismatic politicians  at the national level - no Johanne Schmidt-Nielsen, to make a comparison with Denmark (she incidentally seems to be one of their big idols these days). I doubt that anyone from Rødt's leadership would have a name recognition of more than 4-5% at most, and outside of Klassekampen they are pretty invisible in the media.

A poll from Rambøll has Danish SD at 15,6%. This is a new low and the lowest the party has been in 115 years! They got 14,2% back in 1898, if they go below that the next milestone is 11,3% from the 1895 election.:P

I thought 17-18% was their absolute floor, but this poll indicates it might be even lower.

With new cuts in unemployment benefits for the uninsured and student grants the party looks like they are going to commit suicide.

Red-Green Alliance 12,8%
SPP 4,3%
SD 15,6%
Social Liberals 9,1%

Christian Democrats 0,9%

Liberals 33,5%
Conservatives 4,2%
DPP 14,7%
Liberal Alliance 4,9%

The governments pressure on the Teachers Union during their present conflict with the municipalities has led to plans among union representatives of creating a party for SD leaning public employees, since this is a core constituency for SD its potentially quite serious for them.

At present only 4% of Danish teachers want to vote SD, down from 35% at the 2011 election.
 

Starting count-down for Thorning-Schmidt's forced resignation.

Yes, yes, this is the actual Prime Minister of Denmark, and not a parody
 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cnx4NUQsTGA)

Oh man, that's too funny.

The poll I showed was actually not the worst for Danish SD. YouGov 21-4 got them at 14,4%, so thats pretty close to the 14,2% from the 1898 election. DPP is quite a bit larger in this one.


SD 14.4%

Social Liberals 7.7%
 
Conservatives 4.0%

SPP 3.7%

Liberal Alliance 5.2%
 
Christian Democrats 0.6%
 
DPP 18.1%

Liberals 33.8%

Red-Green Alliance 12.4%


This recent one is better for SD, but SPP is approching the 2% threshold. DPP almost equal with
Its after they legislated the working conditions of the teachers, forcing the Teachers Union to accept 95% of the municipalities demands.  Apparantly SD got rewarded for this, while SPP is getting killed. Former chairman of their youth organization Gry Møger Petersen just joined SD, she is the last in a long line of ambitious young SPPers running for shelter in SD.

SD 17,8 pct.

Social Liberals 7,5 pct.

Conservatives 4,4 pct.

SPP 2,8 pct.

Liberal Alliance 5,2 pct.

Christian Democrats 0,4 pct.

DPP 17,5 pct.

Liberals 31,3 pct.

Red-Green Alliance 13,2 pct.

It’s interesting how different the Danish party system is from the Norwegian, given how similar our countries are. It seems like your Danske Venstre (The Liberals) are a combination of our main conservative party (Høyre), the agrarian party (Senterpartiet), the liberals (Venstre) and our Christian Democrats (Kristelig Folkeparti). What I don’t understand is your Conservative party (Konservativt Folkeparti). Where do they fit in? And why is your conservative party doing so poorly compared to their equivalents in Norway and Sweden?

The Danish left is of course also a whole lot different. The Norwegian Social Democrats (Arbeiderpartiet) have been successful because they have constantly branched out to new groups of voters. In the beginning they made an effort to expand their base from blue collar manual workers to include farmers and people employed in the fishing industry. As their traditional base of voters declined in the decades after the Second World War, they made an effort to include white collar workers (especially in the public sector) into their coalition. And during the last few decades they have become the main party for immigrants (at least the non-western ones). So I guess my question is, why haven’t the Danish Social Democrats been able to do this?

The Danish SD has included the same groups as Arbeiderpartiet, followed the same development in branching out and been almost as strong, its present leadership has just decided to follow an austerity line and been focusing on long term structural reforms instead of trying to reduce unemployment here and now, and since they campaigned on a Keynesian fiscal policy and better education as the way out of the crisis many voters feel betrayed. They have also dropped symbolic policy positions, like a ban on prostitution, which some voters are mad about, but mostly the party is just too neo-liberal for its traditionel voters and it has been unable to attract new ones.

Also the DPP has been really good at attracting disgruntled SD working class voters by styling themselves as old school SDs. DPP doesnt have the same Libertarian element as PP in Norway, so its more attractive to workers. And the Red-Green Alliance is far more competent than Rødt (as we have discussed earlier).

Your other question is more complicated to answer, but I will get back to it.

Basically Norway and Denmarks started out having the same two party system with a conservative-urban Højre vs. a liberal-mainly rural Venstre, this system was then successfully challenged by our respective Social Democrats.

In both countries the original Venstre has split and given birth - directly or indirectly - to several parties.

In Denmark: Venstre and Radikale Venstre. In Norway: Venstre, Senterpartiet and Kristeligt Folkeparti.

A comparison of the Danish and Norwegian centre-right:

1. Høyre and Konservative Folkeparti are quite similar parties, the Danish Conservatives have just been defeated by Venstre in their struggle for the role as the mainstream centre-right party. As late as the 80s our Conservatives where bigger than Venstre, which looked like a doomed party because of urbanisation, but due to internal feuding among the Conservatives and a much more skillfull leadership in Venstre, which managed to "conquer the cities", Venstre became the undisputed mainstream centre-right party and the Conservatives are now a more or less useless and redundant party. Since DPP has the national conservative issues and Liberal Alliance the low tax agenda there is really nowhere they can get the necessary support to bounce back.

2. Kristendemokraterne exists in DK, but are not in parliament, simply because Denmark doesn't have the same bible belt as Norway and is generally a much less Christian country.

3. Radikale Venstre has the role Venstre has in Norway, but has been more successful lately due to good leadership.

4. Liberal Alliance is based on the more Libertarian wing in Radikale Venstre, but has been successful because the low tax agenda (that PP has in Norway) was left wide open when Venstre became more centrist during the 00s and the Conservatives where also perceived as too moderate on tax issues for some people and also not Libertarian enough for this segment.

5. Venstre is the old peasant party, equivalent to the Norwegian and Swedish center parties, but the difference is that Danish peasants are richer than Norwegian (and Swedish) peasants, so Venstre became more of a wealthy middle class party with a more right wing profile, this has allowed them to outmaneuver the Conservatives and become the main centre-right party.

EDIT: I should perhaps clarify by saying that Venstre was bigger than the Conservatives ever since the Conservatives Peoples Party was funded in 1915/16, apart from the 1980s, but at times the difference was rather small and the "natural" pattern would have been, that the urban based  Conservatives squeezed out rural Venstre as urbanization progressed.

Does the Conservative Party still have a relevant role to play in Danish politics, or are they just a junior partner to Venstre? With the two parties being so simillar, aren't the Conservatives a bit 'redundant' nowadays?

I put the relevant part of my long post above in bold.

That said they would claim that compared to Venstre they are greener, more concerned about helping the marginalized (mental patients, disabled etc.) and more interested in securing quality in culture and education + more humanitarian on refugee issues and at least regarding the environment and culture there is some truth to this.

Basically having two mainstream centre-right parties has been pointless at least since the 60s, and Venstres leader Erik Eriksen suggested a merger in 1965 - and then had to resign as party chairman when it failed. After that it was just a matter of which party would come out on top. This has been settled at least since 2001.

One reason there are still two parties, is that they have very different party cultures. The Conservatives being an elite party reflecting bourgeois culture and with certain noblesse oblige tendencies, while Venstre is quite folksy despite streamlining and modern communication and mixes raw materialism with Grundtvig and the Folk High School movement. The Conservatives still have the third highest membership of any party, so I doubt they will die out soon, but the party looks doomed in the long run.

As politicus said above it can seem a bit redundant with two mainstream centre-right parties, at least after the Liberal Alliance emerged in 2008/2009 as the low-tax alternative. However, it should still be very possible for them to score 7-9 % of the votes, but the party has made a couple of mistakes which has so far sent them down to historically low figures around 3-5 %.
First of all, they seemed to panic too much about the emergence of the Liberal Alliance and instead of emphasizing other parts of their program, they went into a duel with LA about who wanted to lower taxes and cut public expenditure the most. A battle that they could never win as the Conservatives were part of the government and had been for several years, while the Liberal Alliance was free and had little restrictions on them.
Secondly, the party has created doubt about its right-wing credentials on the law and order and immigration policies. The current leadership and group of MPs have been called the most left-wing in the history of the party, and is dominated by social conservatives who have quite some reluctance in cooperating with the Danish People's Party. Party leader Lars Barfoed is probably also personally quite angry at them, as they withdrew support to him in 2006, which meant he had to resign as Minister of Consumer Protection and Family Affairs. One example of how this has cost them was the deal they made in the 2011 election with the Radikale Venstre (Social Liberal Party) that  the parties should cooperate more, and that any future government should base their policies on broad cooperation across the middle. A deal heavily criticized by the DPP and claims were maid that the two parties, Conservatives and Social Liberals, were starting to look alike. For voters who preferred a continuation of the 2001-2011 policies this was the clear proof that the Conservatives were moving away from right-wing views, so instead the chose to vote for the DPP and especially Venstre (the Liberals).

It's questionable whether Barfoed can rebuild the right-wing credentials, that he himself played a big role in destroying. They could be saved by personal scandals or very unpopular moves from Venstre, but otherwise I think they have to change their leader and move the party back towards the right. Maybe Brian Mikkelsen, a Minister throughout the 2001-2011 years, or the young Rasmus Jarlov, who is the party leader in the Copenhagen city council and will join the Folketing when/if the former Foreign Minister Per Stig Møller, perhaps the most prominent social conservative in the group, retires.

Social Conservative means something completely different to Americans, so lets just call them centrists ;-)

Parties don't necessarily live forever and I don't think you can assume that the Danish Conservatives will survive in the long run. Their crisis is due to more than just a few policy-mistakes and mishaps, its a structural problem in the sense that there isn't any real need for the party anymore. They will hang in there for a decade or possibly two and then disappear into the dustbin of history.

Even assuming they have a chance (and they do in the short run) I don't agree that moving to the right is necessarily the best thing to do. Those positions are already taken by others, to quote myself (bad habit): "their problem is that they have nowhere to go". Building on an image as the more sophisticated, urban, cultured centre-right alternative to crude neo-liberalism might be their best chance.
  
Historically there has always been two wings in the party: a centrist, welfare-conservative and a low tax, tough on law and order right wing. What kept the party together was the defence-issue and patriotism, but this issue isnt polarized in Danish politics anymore so it doesn't really work as a unifier. One of the reasons the party has done badly is the countless feuds between those two wings throughout the party history, so moving to the right would likely trigger yet another "civil war" and I doubt they can survive that. The right wing may be displeased with certain policies at the momemt, but at least they are not in open rebellion as long as the party is low tax, pro-business and tough on law and order.

Most Conservative voters (and potential voters) are not anti-immigration, so I especially doubt it would help them to move to the right on this one. Most of their voters where quite dissatisfied when they had to accept DPP-type immigration and refugee policies during the AFR and Løkke governments. So I think the party is better of being the voice of "bourgeois decency", as its traditionally called, on this subject as well as others.

Like the German FDP in the old days they have the strategic problem whether to be on the right or left of their big brother, with a wing representing each view. FDP chose to be to the right of CDU, but it has given them some problems and they lost certain groups. But the major problem in this is that Liberal Alliance is basically the Danish FDP while DPP has the reactionarians, national conservatives and the "hang them high"-crowd. Its not really a viable position IMO.

Perhaps the best thing simply would be for the party to simply merge with the Liberals? I can understand why they exist, in a historical context, as the culturally urban alternative to the Liberals. But now that the Liberals (as I understand) is just as much as a urban party, and caters to a lot of the same voters, it just doesn’t make any sense to have a 4 -5% party like the Danish Conservatives. I am not familiar enough with Danish politics, but isn’t the Liberals enough of a big tent party to absorb the Conservatives?

I don't neccessarily assume that they will survive in the long run, but I do think that retreating to the position they had before Barfoed became leader will give them a better chance of survival in the short and the long run.

The problem with the left-turn they made is that I think it will be very difficult to convince "the sophisticated, urban and cultural elite" away from the centre-left parties, mainly Radikale Venstre. And the young globalized business elite will remain in the Liberal Alliance.

I think the party was reasonably united under Bendt Bendtsen, who was probably slightly right-leaning. Lene Espersen was clearly a member of the right wing, but until the holiday scandal the party remained quite stable. Her leadership triggered Pia Christsmas-Møller to leave, but she had been marginalized for years anyway. And neither Christmas-Møller nor Seeberg's resignations seemed to hurt the party. Those voters advocating "bourgeois decency" to a large extent already left in the beginning of the cooperation with DPP. And althought, it might be difficult to keep the 10-11 % with Liberal Alliance around, they could arguably have stabilized themselves around 7-8 %.

With regards to position, it seems that Barfoed has placed the Conservatives to the right for Venstre on economic issues and to the left for them on law and order and immigration. Their position  actually seems clearer now that under Bendt Bendtsen, but this has arguably caused some of the defections.

The Liberals is a big tent, catch all party, but the problem is that the Liberals is a much bigger party, about three times as big, so the Conservative party culture would drown in the Liberal sea and given the very different party cultures Conservatives would see this as a loss of identity. Party culture and identity is often more important than policies.
Basically this idea has been dead ever since Eriksen proposed it in 1965.

Diouf: I basically disagree that the Conservatives have turned left under Barfoed. They courted the Social Liberals during the campaign, sure, but their policy positions are not more left leaning than they were under Bendtsen, they are just a little clearer.


By whom?

But the deal with the Social Liberals was not just about courting them and the broad cooperation idea. Immigration was clearly stated as an area where the Conservatives wanted to make agreements wil the Social Liberals which inevitably means a left turn. Barfoed said about the deal: "I easily think we can get into step in the future in relation to integration and the labour market, and to secure humanism and brotherliness in what we do".

Sure, but this is just one area and immigration and integration is a field where most Conservatives have basically been dissatisfied with the ultra tough Liberal-DPP approach the whole time, especially considering the refugee policy. During VK they had to back the governments tough stance, and when it was pretty clear that the VK-government was doomed Barfoed changed the tune. But they still defend the 24 year rule and the core of the VK-immigration policy.

This is more about creating an edge to the Liberals, than about a left wing turn in general. Barfoed has been pretty Conservative Classic IMO with a touch of "bourgeois decency" (borgerlig anstændighed) regarding immigrants, refugees and civil rights.

Is there any chance that the Liberal tent could rip and the Conservatives weave one of the tatters into their own tapestry?

No, the Danish Liberals descends from the peasant movement and they still have the movement culture with a strong internal coherence despite incorporating both social liberals, and classical liberals, and having a wide range of professions among its supporters: academics, businessmen, craftsmen, workers and farmers. Their leaders used to be called chieftains and its still a party that is very loyal to its leadership.

Are there any Danish polls which display party support by demographic group (eg age, education etc) ?

Not often, gender is the most commonly used background variable. Diouf and Jens are probably the best people to PM for references to places you might find those data.

This article (in Danish) gives the basics about who votes what, but its from 2011 and SD and SPP have lost a lot of support since then. Still its a starting point and perhaps you can read it with google translate.

http://www.cvap.polsci.ku.dk/valgkamp/presse/Social_baggrund_afg_r_igen_partivalg_-_CVAP_i_Berlingske.pdf/ (http://www.cvap.polsci.ku.dk/valgkamp/presse/Social_baggrund_afg_r_igen_partivalg_-_CVAP_i_Berlingske.pdf/)

There are two Danish articles here on age and workers.

http://www.altinget.dk/artikel/de-unge-flygter-fra-s

The tables in the bottom should be relatively easy to understand.
The first three tables deal with party choice of different age groups at the 2011 election, in April/June 2012 polls and October/December 2012 polls respectively. The last three tables are even more specific and shows party choice in relation to both gender and age; Mænd (men) and Kvinder (Women).

These tables shows some very significant, although not very surprising, figures. The Liberal Alliance was the second biggest party among young men with 15.3 % at the 2011 election. The Danish People's Party received 17.7 % among people above 65, and 19.9 % of men above 65. The Social Liberals (16.2 %) and the Red-Green Alliance (12.1 %) both fared markedly better among young women than among voters in general.

http://www.altinget.dk/artikel/arbejderne-flygter-fra-socialdemokratiet

There are two tables in the bottom of the article. The first one shows the party choice among the population as a whole at the 2011 election, October/December 2011 polls, January/March 2012. The second one shows the party choice of the workers, both skilled and unskilled.

The Center Party has raised as the number one party in the gallups from it's collapse in and after the elections 2011. Seems that the new leader was a good choice.

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What's interesting is also that the National Coalition Party lost is number one position which is have kept almost continuous  from 2007. The mid-term examination of the cabinet program also seems to be heave burden for the parties in the cabinet, especially for the social democrats who seem to came down a lot.

The gallup (http://yle.fi/uutiset/yle_poll_centre_now_largest_party/6612540) in english.

The Left Alliance has a nice grown especially because of the fact that the leader of the party was  the one to demand for the re-evaluation of dividend taxation.

I presume the Liberals are among the 1,1% for Others. That's pretty bad for the heirs to the good old Liberal Peoples Party. Why so low? 

The has been no strong tradition of really strong liberal party in Finland. The Finnish Liberal party was effectively killed when it lost its sole MP in the elections in 1995 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnish_parliamentary_election,_1995). After that has been only minor parties which haven't been able to get people elected. The newest try is this "The National Progressive Party" (http://edistyspuolue.fi/briefly-in-english-2/) which doesn't seem be able to secure the needed 5 000 names. That's really funny because even the Communist Workers' Party – For Peace and Socialism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_Peace_and_Socialism_%E2%80%93_Communist_Workers%27_Party) was able to re-enter the party register it was dropped, because it was unable to secure any MPs in two elections.

The liberals in the Finnish political parties are traditionally concentrated in the National Coalition Party and in the Green.

Okay, I didnt know LPP lost representation that early. They renamed the party to the Liberals in 2000, and I thought this party still existed. Is it dissolved now?

Yea, the Liberals as a political party were dropped from the party register in the 2007 and after this they're unable re-register their party. In the elections 2011 they had a deal with Pirate Party that the candidates would run in the list of Pirate Party. After the elections the Liberals changed itself to a political think tank and political organization and some of them started the National Progressive Party -project.  

You can understand the condition of Finnish "liberals" if they're not even able to get 5 000 names for their party...

Yes, thats sounds truly miserable. Why the " " around the word liberals?

Because in my eyes and as Ethelberth  pointed out most of these liberals who are not members of already existing parties are more libertarians than old-school liberals like the Liberal Peoples Party.

What sort of system does Finland have in place regarding taxation of dividends, and what do the Left Alliance propose?

Okay, I thought thats probably what you meant, but wasnt quite sure.

So basically the Finnish party system (minus the Swedes in SPP) is almost equal to the Danish party system just without Liberalism as a defining factor for the parties (we have no less than three liberal parties!) and therefore no equivalent of Liberal Alliance.

Left Alliance = Red-Green Alliance + SPP left wing
SD = SD + SPP "workerite" right wing
Greens = Social Liberals + SPP green wing
Christian Democrats = Christian Democrats
Center = Liberal "rural" or traditional wing  
NCP = Conservatives + Liberal "urban" or modern wing
True Finns = DPP
Libertarian fringe groups = Liberal Alliance (currently polling at 5%)

Yes, but I was thinking about the current system. The "workerite" wing in SPP are right wingers who are almost indistinguishable from SDs and wouldn't fit in the Left Alliance.
Red-Green Alliance also has supporters in the union movement and several of their MPs are union representatives so thats comparable to the Left Alliance.

RV has long since lost its smallholder roots and is today a party for urban upper middle class "progressives" concerned with the environment and humanitarian issues but also liberal on economic policies, so I think its pretty close to the Finnish Greens.

"Traditional" Venstre is the more moderate mainly small town/rural wing of the party and I think that must be pretty close to the Finnish Center Party, but of course Venstre is an odd party that is difficult to compare to other party systems.

Wou, from the Guardian


A video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=37hmg7R1YCk) about it and a best picture:
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Yeah, she didn't have the guts to speak in Fælledparken in Copenhagen where the SD leader normally speaks, but they boohed her in Jutland as well. Still I think it would have been much worse in Copenhagen. Demonstrators spoiled most of the prominent SDs speeches in the big cities and SPP leader Annette Vilhelmsen simply had to cut her speech short because of the yelling. Some protesters executed a Corydon-doll (our minister of finance) in front of parliament. People are angry, that's for sure.

So Vilhelmsen hasn't taken the SPP to the left like she said she would, I take it?

Well, rhetorically she has and quite a few of the young so-called "workerite" right wingers have left the party for SD, but she has stayed in the government and is unable to influence its policy since SD and the Social Liberals don't care if SPP leaves. So it doesn't really matter what she says. SPP is approaching the threshold, so most observers think they will have to leave the government soon, but its probably too late for Vilhelmsen to regain her left wing credentials. She is seen as weak, indecisive and a light weight.

I was in Fælledparken yesterday and witnessed anti-democratic hooligans attact women and children. They also tried to rip the red banners to pieces and threw things at the Lord Mayor of Copenhagen. 100 % assholes!

New poll from YouGov with SD only 0,7% in front of the Red-Green Alliance, clearly within the margin of error. This is the closest the Red-Greens have been to overtaking SD.

Liberals and DPP have an outright majority. 60,1% for the right wing opposition and only 25,4% for the government.

SD 15,2%
Social Liberals 6,9%
Conservatives 4,5%
SPP 3,3%
Liberal Alliance 5,4%
Christian Democrats 0,4%
DPP 18,9%
Liberals 31,0%
Red-Green Alliance 14,5

I have been waiting for when the first new "genuine" SD party in Denmark would emerge. Now Allan Busk deputy leader of 3F (unskilled labourers union) in Aalborg (pop. 170.000) has launched a new, so far unnamed, SD party based on a network of Jutlandic union representatives. He got 2800+ votes at the last regional council election and is well known in the region, one of the SD left wings strongholds.

This is of course a challenge on a low level, but given the amount of anger among union representatives and SD left wingers combined with extremely bad polling this might trigger a snowball effect.

Busk says he "cant look his unemployed comrades in the eyes" and "doesn't have the patience to wait for Helle Thorning-Schmidt to be thrown out".

First Icelandic poll since the election shows IP clearly in the lead and PP losing ground. Probably both right wing voters dissatisfied about SDG flirting with the leftists before forming the coalition and more centrist voters disappointed he went right after all. Perhaps also disappointment about the lack of clarity regarding debt reduction.
BF seems to be rewarded for being ready to enter a broad coalition and Pirates for being ready to support a PP minority government to keep IP out.
SDA isn't losing much despite all the internal bickering.

IP 28,4 (+1,7 since the election)
PP 19,9 (-4,5)
Left Greens 12,1 (+1,2)
SDA 11,7 (-1,2)
Bright Future 11,3 (+3,1)
Pirates 6,5 (+1,4)

Dawn 3,8 (+0,7)
Democracy Watch 1,6 (-0,9)
Right Greens 1,4 (-0,3)
Households Party 1,2 (-1,8)
Rainbow 0,8 (-0,3)
Sturla Jónsson 0,5 (+0,4)
Rural Party 0,5 (+0,3)
Peoples Front of Iceland 0,1 (-)
Humanists 0,0 (-0,1)

The Progress Party (FrP) have just had their annual national convention. The party is of course trying to prepare for government, but they have been hit by some negative news in the past week (not that this will have much influence on the polls)

First of all, party leader Siv Jensen has launched a strong attack on The Norwegian Model.  She claims that it is not fit for our time, and should be replaced by a new model - called the Frp model, fittingly. :p She has been criticized for this, even by the other Bourgeois parties. Unfortunately, it seems that she has little idea what the concept of a "Norwegian model" actually entails.

Most interestingly though, is the debate in the party on climate change - which have not been as fierce as the ones on Atlas, unfortunately. The party leadership has partly come around on the issue, and has made statements to the effect that humans does have a significant effect on the climate. However, climate change denial is still by far the prevailing view of the base of the party, and also amongst their politicians. There was a very interesting survey that showed how elected politicians of the various parties viewed the concept of human-caused climate change: http://www.ba.no/nyheter/article6671225.ece
It turns out that 9/10 FrP officials reject the concept. SV has the highest agreement, with 96% thinkin that climate change is caused by humans.
Venstre: 87% agrees.
Høyre: 50% agrees.
Arbeiderpartiet: 72% agrees.
Krf: 73% agrees.
Senterpartiet: 69% agrees.

Very interesting, IMO. I wonder what the equivalent figures would be in the other Scandinavian/Nordic countries?

Thats pretty low for Ap and very low for Høyre.

I dont have any polling, but I think those numbers would be higher for all similar parties in Denmark (apart from SV/SF, which would be similar). Questioning human causes is considered out of the mainstream here.

At the moment Villum Christensen MP from Liberal Alliance and Morten Messerschmidt MEP for DPP are the only national level politicians that are openly climate change deniers and I dont know any pols that are "only" human cause sceptics.

A few Liberal MPs are probably privately cc deniers, but its against party policy and DPP officially recognizes human causes, its part of their "respectability" line.
The most prominent Liberal cc denier was former Minister of Finance Thor Pedersen, but he is retired now.
I doubt any Conservative MPs are human cause sceptics.

The right wing argument here is more the Lomborg-argument, that it is too expensive and pointless to do anything and that the money could be used more wisely on other things.

I suppose the proces up to the Copenhagen summit and the fierce Lomborg debate can explain a lot of the difference. Perhaps also AFRs personal influence while PM.

I am sure the Icelandic SDA would also be higher than Ap, but the traditional Icelandic centre-right (ie the present government) could easily privately be similar to Norway. But both parties officially recognize human causes.

I see now that my wording in the last post might have been unintentionally misleading: the survey was of elected local politicians of the various parties, not MPs and prominent "national" politicians. I suspect that a survey of national politicians would show a much higher belief in AGW. Both due to higher educational levels, and that a national politician who don't believe in climate change would be more hesitant to state his true beliefs in fear of the consequenses.
- amongst FrP's national politicians though, I suspect there would still be a clear denier/sceptic majority.

The local politicians views are very close to the views of the parties' respective voters, IMO - at least the numbers fit pretty well with what has been my impression of their "bases".

To be honest, it is sort of an open question what the Norwegian (or Nordic) model actually entails.

As of now it seems like the debate mostly centers on which party that should be given credit for creating the Norwegian model.

Just to make sure I get this, how broad is the concept of the "Norwegian model"?

In Denmark we use "the Danish model" for the way our labour market is organized with employer and employee organizations negotiating agreements that are valid for everybody, a complicated labour market legal system with mediators and a labour court etc. + the government playing a small role.

Is the Norwegian model used in the same narrow way or is it about the entire way Norwegian society is organized?

That description sounds very simillar to how "The Norwegian Model" (or "the Nordic model", for that matter) is used, though the term of course is open to interpretation, as these last days have shown. I think most people would agree that a universal welfare state, with a strong safety net, is a vital part of the "model".

You might enjoy this interview, where Jensen tries to explain what this debate is all about - Unfortunately, it is not exactly illuminating:
http://www.vg.no/nyheter/innenriks/valg-2013/artikkel.php?artid=10116928

Venstre's Lykke Friis has retired from politics and has returned to the University of Copenhagen as a pro-rector. She had the same position before she entered politics in November 2009 when she was named Minister of Climate and Energy. In the 2011 election she ran for the first time and got a brilliant result; she received 30.910 personal votes, the sixth-highest number of all. She was widely expected to become Minister of European Affairs, or perhaps even Foreign Affairs if Venstre regains power after the next election.

She says that she has always known that she was not going to be a lifetime-politician and that she looks forward to go back to the University.

A big loss for Venstre as she was one of the most popular politicians in Denmark

Given that Søren Pind has made himself "unappointable" (dunno if that's a word, but it should be ;) ) and Venstre will be going solo next time I think it was pretty clear that she was destined to become Minister of Foreign Affairs in a Venstre government. Which leaves Løkke with a problem. Who do you think he will chose? I don't see Pind getting it - not a diplomatic bone in that guys bony bod.

Well, I would still see Pind as the most likely Minister of Foreign Affairs, although he is indeed quite divisive, both in the party and in the population. His criticism of the US and its drone usage has certainly not made it easier for him to get that job. Lars Løkke does seem to rate him quite highly. It's a tough call, but there are no other clear candidates.
Michael Aastrup Jensen, Gitte Lillelund Bech and Eva Kjer Hansen have dealt quite a lot with foreign policy, but neither of them really seem high-profile enough for such a role. If you want to go with the old diplomat type, then perhaps Bertel Haarder could be a option. He has been a Minister of seven or eight different things, including European Affairs and a MEP, but he is not really popular and to some extent a loose cannon. Ellen Trane Nørby is quite talented, popular and well-known, but she is perhaps considered too green for the job. She could be a good guess as Minister of European Affairs.

Life is good in the Nordic countries according to OECD.

Four Nordic countries are in top 10 on OECD's new Better Life Index comparing 11 parameters on housing, income, jobs, education, environment, civic engagement, health, life satisfaction, safety and work/leisure balance. Both Sweden and Norway are in Top 4. Finland is 12th right after NZ. Its remarkably that Iceland despite the crisis is number 9. Also 5 Anglophone countries in Top 12.

* 1. Australia

* 2. Sweden

* 3. Canada

* 4. Norway

* 5. Switzerland

* 6. USA

* 7. Denmark

* 8. Holland

* 9. Iceland

* 10. UK

* 11. New Zealand

* 12. Finland

A recent poll shows the strongest results for the Danish People's Party in several years in the polls made by Greens Analyseinstitut.

Social Democrats           17.2 %
Social Liberals                8.3 %
Conservatives                3.8 %
Socialist's People's Party  6.1 %
Liberal Alliance               6.8 %
Christian Democrats         0.7 %
Danish People's Party      17.9 %
Liberals                         28.1 %
Unity List/Red-Greens      10.9 %
Others                           0.2 %

SD + RV + SF + EL = 42.5 %
V + DF + K + LA = 56.6 %
V + DF = 46 %
V + LA + RV + KF = 47 %
V + DF + K = 49. 8 %


SF seems to have regained some of the voters it lost to the Unity List. Perhaps this is because the party finally had a success as the government,just before the summer holidays, decided to phase in the reform of unemployment benefits in a slower way. This also means that there has been little internal critcism in the last few months and the subject of unemployment benefits is not discussed intensely any more in the media as it had been for months before the decision. DF holds on to many dissatisfied Social Democrats and has perhaps attracted some liberals too after a heavy discussion in the media about the Liberal's policy of 0% growth in the public sector in the coming years.

In other news, it now seems safe to say that the Conservatives and Liberal Alliance have switched positions on immigration policy over the last year or three. Today the Conservative leader Lars Barfoed said that he would not support any tightening of immigrations laws that goes beyond the status at the election in 2011. The three other right-wing parties all disagreed with that statement. It's not suprising that V and DF disagree, but that LA does as well seems the final indication that they are now to the right of the Conservatives on this issue. Quite significant as Liberal Alliance was founded as the New Alliance which had a very liberal immigration policy and had a clear goal of keeping DF out of power. Even when many of the left-wing members had left the party and it was reshaped as Liberal Alliance, it kept a very liberal immigration policy and even voted for some of the current government's policies just after the election. However, they have moved significantly right on this subject and now demands a narrower definition of asylum so fewer seekers will be granted asylums and that is should be easier to expulse foreign criminals.

Out of curiosity - are there still parties on the right calling for the re-introduction of Danish border controls? It definitely didn't help marketing Denmark as a tourism location in Germany....

The decline and imminent fall of Gucci Helle has been a truly depressing sight. Going 2 miss u bb.

With Sylt's existence there's really no point in visiting Denmark. 

The Danish People's Party, who pushed it through in 2011, is the only party who actively and continuously campaigns to re-introduce the border control. However, as the recent history will show this is not just a right-wing thing. Furthermore, because it is not debated that often it is difficult to say exactly what the different parties think right now.

In 2009 at the European Elections the Social Democrats called for a re-introduction of the old-style border controls as a temporary measure while a newer and better form of control was build-up. However, the party seemed quite divided on the issue and it was not clear whether the Christiansborg Social Democrats agreed. When DF put forward the proposal in the Danish Parliament later that year. it was only supported by them and the Unity List. The latter supported it because they believed it would help fight human trafficking and show the EU that Denmark had its sovereignty on this issue.

Then in 2011, the Liberal-Conservative government needed DF's support for reforms of the unemployment benefits and the early retirement scheme. DF, however, would only accept these if the government agreed to re-introduce border controls. In the end a deal was made with the ambiguous name "Permanent customs controls (a strengthening of border controls) and it included the building of a new building at the border with permanent manning which should control 1-4/1000 of the cars and a general rise in the number of customs officers. This meant that DF could happily brag about a permanent border control with barriers, while the government stated that there was no permanent border control and that it was simply more money to fight crime. The SD and SF at first supported the measures, but then changed their mind and even demanded that the vote should be in the full parliament, where VKO did not have a majority, instead of in the committee, where VKO did have a majority. Whether this change of opinion was due to the EU's reaction and Thorning-Schmidt's affinity to the EU, or a tactical measure to portrait the government as weak and stumbling around is hard to tell. The Unity List's reactions to the measure was shortly put that they liked the proposal, for the same reasons mentioned above, but did not like the proposers so the voted against it. In the end the Government managed to convince the two former Conservative independents to vote for the measure so it narrowly passed.
At the 2011 election the Social Liberals, who had always been against border controls, campaigned heavily against it and used it as a symbol of a tired and insular government/majority. After the election the new government + the Unity List and the Liberal Alliance repealed the measure. I think that the Liberals and especially the Conservatives will be quite reluctant to re-introduce the measures in light of the media storm last time.


It certainly did not make Denmark a popular destination amongst politicians and newspaper editors, but I'm no so sure about Germany as a whole. Online polls at the time in Die Welt and Bild Zeitung showed that 84 and 77 % respectively approved of the measure. There are of course caveats with those kind of polls, but it doesn't seem like it has played much of a role amongst tourists. When owners of holiday houses and centres are asked, they say that the biggest German worry is the Danish Dog Law as they are unsure about which dog races are forbidden and which offences that will lead to the killing of the dog.

I prefer Amrum and St. Peter-Ording to Sylt, but anyway...
The Danish North Sea coast is much less crowded than the German one, the Kattegat beaches are quite nice, there is no German equivalent to Bornholm, and guess where LEGOLAND is.

There are of course the hard core holiday house & caravan camping German tourists that have been going to the same place in Denmark for the last 30 summers and will continue to do so, with or without border controls (as long as you make sure that they are not checked for the amount of beer they carry with them). But that demography will gradually die away.
In addition,  you have people wanting to explore a new region every year, some of which (like my family) have a rather European approach, while others have a strong Nordic focus. These people, especially the "Nordic" ones, are the interesting target group. Now, after the introduction of border controls, two of our acquaintances with Nordic focus  shifted their holiday plans away from Denmark, and went to Öland and Lithuania instead (ferries from Travemünde).

The issue here in Schleswig-Holstein is local pride (a concept that surely is not unknown to Denmark). As symbolic as the measure may have been, it came across as "You guys don't trust us that we can do the job well ourselves, and you don't want to do it together with us. If you want to be left alone, we leave you alone. There is other places we can go to."

Anyway, good to hear that most Danish parties will be reluctant to re-introduce the measure. However, if I understand the latest polling correctly, after the next elections it may be quite difficult to form a government without DF, so they may start a new 'blackmailing' attempt ..

Well, right now it looks fairly certain that the next government will be a pure V-government if the right wing gets a majority. DF has made it quite clear that they do not want to participate in government after the next election; they often state that they don't want to end up as SF. Liberal Alliance is simply too extreme economically and wouldn't want to join either. The Conservatives are really trying to differentiate themselves from the other parties and probably realize that their last term in government was too long and didn't provide them with enough results. More than half of the Conservative parliamentary group are former ministers, but that might work both ways. They have tried government and doesn't need to go there again, or they have tried it and want to return. If another party is going to join the government it will be the Conservatives, but the chance is really low, I reckon.

The interesting part is the which kind of support the V-government would have to draw upon and which majority options it would have. The easiest thing for them would probably be if they could form a majority with DF alone, or with RV + LA + K. That could provide them with a stable platform, and I guess Lars Løkke Rasmussen might prefer the latter option as it would mean that his economic policies could largely be carried through. A majority alone with DF would allow them to carry through their immigration and justice policy with knobs on, but they would have difficulties agreeing on economic policy. However, right now neither of these options have a majority in the polls, and even if they did have it would be a very narrow one. So most likely V would have to deal with DF + at least one of the other three parties which would make every single negotiation hard.
An unknown quantity is the behaviour of S and SF after a lost election. SF will almost certainly backtrack to a markedly more left-wing position. The approach of S would probably depend a lot on their leadership; will Thorning-Schmidt stay and if not who will take over. If S continues approximately their current economic policies and is willing to cooperate a lot, then things could be a lot easier for a V-government.

While her polling is indeed terrible, I think people are still to early in concluding that the right-wing will win the next Danish general election - though obviously they are heavy favourites. Keep in mind, there are over 2 years until the PM needs to call an election. A lot can happen in that time.

The media is reporting that a cabinet reshuffle will take place tomorrow. Exciting to see how many changes will happen. Foreign Minister and former SF leader Villy Søvndal will be sacked according to most pundits, and the party might try to exchange that post for some ministries that they feel will be better for them such as Climate and Energy, Education, and Social and Integration.

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The cabinet reshuffle has been rather moderate. Only one new person enters the government and two persons leave it in addition to a number of shifts of ministries for current ministers. Foreign Minister Villy Søvndal was spared and continues in the government. The Social Liberals' ministers were not involved in the reshuffle while S and SF each had a goal to fulfill with the reshuffle. SF wanted a new post for their leader Annette Vilhelmsen who couldn't profile herself very well in a very technical Ministry of Business and Growth while S wanted to introduce Henrik Sass Larsen into the government. Sass Larsen has long been a high-ranking Social Democrat and was widely expected to become Minister for Finance after the 2011 election. However, under dramatic circumstances he chose to withdraw as a potential minister when he was told that the intelligence service could not give him a security clearance. The main problem was his friendship with a corrupt local Social Democrat who often moved on the edge of the law. Through this relationsship he had been in contact a couple of times with a high ranking member of the criminal motorcycle gang Bandidos. Since then the whole case about the clearance has been rolled up and most people agree that the relationsship was not as reprehensible as it seemed at first.

List of changes. New/remaining ministers from left to right on picture:

Minister for Transport Henrik Dam Kristensen (S) is no longer a part of the government.
Minister for Food, Agriculture and Fisheries Mette Gjerskov (S) is no longer a part of the government.

Former Minister of Defence Nick Hækkerup (S) becomes Minister of Trade and European Affairs
Former Minister of Integration and Social Affairs Karen Hækkerup (S) becomes Minister for Food, Agriculture and Fisheries.
Henrik Sass Larsen (S) becomes Minister for Business and Growth
Former Minister for Business and Growth Annette Vilhemsen (SF) becomes Minister of Integration, Children and Social Affairs.
Former Minister for Trade and Investment Pia Olsen Dyhr (SF) becomes Minister for Transport.
Former Minister of European Affairs Nicolai Wammen (S) becomes Minister of Defence.

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The MP and former Minister Uffe Elbæk has decided to leave the Radikale Venstre/Social Liberal Party to become an independent. He says that he can no longer defend the government's policies and mentions several examples of polices that he has opposed: The new publicity law which in some areas restricts the media's access to information, the Finance Minister Bjarne Corydon's statements that the modern welfare state is and should be a competition state i.e. New Public Management is the way forward, that the Kurdish TV station Roj TV has had its license withdrawn. The straw that broke the camel's back, according to Elbæk, was that the government a few days ago decided to ditch the earmarking of parental leave to dads and instead introduce a small financial bonus for the dads who decide to go on parental leave. All the four left wing parties agreed on the measure before the election and it was even in the government programme, but especially the Social Democrats got cold feet.
He says that he still supports Helle Thorning-Schmidt as PM, but the reliable left wing bloc has now been reduced to 91 seats. A majority in the Folketing requires 90 seats.

Elbæk has had a long career in the cultural world as an entrepreneur and supported others who wanted to start up their own project in that field. He was a member of the city council in Aarhus from 2001 to 2007 and was elected to the Folketing in 2011. He was very surprisingly made Minister of Culture in the new government, and many questioned whether he would be able to manoeuvre in the political world which he didn't seem to fit perfectly into. He resigned as a Minister in December 2012 after heavy criticism from all the non-government parties as it was disclosed that the ministry had held several arrangements and dinners at the Academy of Untamed Creativity where his husband worked and where he himself had formerly been a board member.

Danish Government agrees on budget with Liberals and Conservatives
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Persons in picture, from man with the striped tie to the left: Peter Christensen, Financial Spokesman for the Liberals; Margrethe Vestager, Minister of Economic and Interior Affairs and Social Liberal Leader; Brian Mikkelsen, Conservative Spokesman on Industry and Taxation; Bjarne Corydon, Social Democratic Minister of Finance; Lars Barfoed, Conservative Leader; Holger K. Nielsen, Minister of Taxation from the SPP; Lars Løkke Rasmussen, Liberal Leader

Surprisingly, the Danish Government tonight decided to make an agreement on the budget for 2014 with the Liberals and the Conservatives. Normally the budgets are agreed upon with the government's support party/parties, but despite long negotiations with Enhedslisten/Unity List - Red Green Alliance, they could not reach an agreement. The main obstacle in the negotiations seemed to be Enhedslisten's demand that it should be inserted into the law that care-requiring persons should have the right to at least two showers a week. The Government argued that it would create too much bureaucracy and that it would circumvent the local democracy which we have just had elections for. Instead the Government offered some other things, including a billion kr (130 milllion euro) for elderly care which the kommuner themselves could decide what to spend on in that area.

As Enhedslisten didn't back down on their demand, the Government instead started negotiating with the Liberals and the Conservatives today and made an agreement a short while ago. The agreement included things that was in the negotiations with Enhedlisten, including the billion kr for the elderly, but other than that there were three main things in the agreement. 800 million kr of tax concessions for companies will go into force a year earlier, 900 million kr to higher job allowances, especially for single parents, and the annulment of the increased allowance for trade union membership which had been in the agreement that the government had planned to do with Enhedslisten.

Basically,this has made Enhedslisten even more angry with the government, and probably created even more dissatisfaction among many members in the SPP and the Social Democrats. The Liberals are quite happy to get some positive media time after a lot of talk about their leader's travel scandal. 

I recognize this from Borgen.

Danish Minister of Justice forced to resign
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The Danish Minister of Justice Morten Bødskov was today forced to resign after the government's support party Enhedslisten declared that they no longer had confidence in him. So had all the opposition parties and therefore he no longer had a majority of MP's behind him and would not have survived a no-confidence vote.
The reason for the parties' lack of confidence in him is that the lied to the Folketing's Justice Committee about the reason for a cancelled Justice Committee trip to the controversial, anarchic Christiania area. The intelligence service had told the Minister that such a trip would include great threats to their security, especially due to the presence of former DF/DPP leader Pia Kjærsgaard who is not very popular in these sorts of areas. However, the Minister lied and told the committee that the trip was cancelled because the police chief couldn't make it that day. He claims that he told the lie so that the intelligence informant in the area would not be revealed.

This case comes on top of a lot of other negative stories about the minister, and Enhedslisten is not all that pleased with neither him as a right-wing Social Democrat nor the government as a whole right now. Bødskov has been touted as the next Danish EU-commissioner, and I'm not sure that this case makes that less likely.
Recently, the leader of the intelligence service has resigned after a number of bad cases, the last one related to the abovementioned case as documents had revealed that the intelligence service had, at least planned, looking in Pia Kjærsgaard's calendar to find a date for the trip where she could not make it. Whether they actually did is not clear yet.

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The Prime Minister is in South Africa for the Mandela memorial ceremony and received his resignation via sms. Bødskov was one of her closest allies, and a part of the Coordination Committee where the seven highest ranked/most influential ministers make a lot of the big decisions. No new minister will probably be appointed before she returns home.

Selfies at Funerals!!
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BbIpd_ZCIAELNpf.jpg:large

That seems like a very unnecessary thing to lie about. He should join Håkan Juholt's group "Politicians that lie for the fun of it even when there's no reason to."

Indeed. Perhaps he had gone too native in terms of his relations with the intelligence service since he believed it so adamant to protect an informant that he would lie to the Committee. I don't see why he could not have given a briefing, perhaps even a confidential one, to the committee where he could have broadly outlined the threat without going to so much detail that it would compromise the informants.

Any particular reason for the recent upswing for the government in Denmark? Apparently Rasmussen (stupidly) flew first class to a conference and things have spiraled?

The Rasmussen case was probably the main reason, yes. He flew on first class nine times in his role as President for the Global Green Growth Institute which is mainly funded by development aid from a number of countries, including Denmark. Whether the case directly moved voters or trigged movements which would have perhaps happened otherwise is hard to tell; perhaps a bit of both.

However, in the recent month the government has had a lot of poor cases so it might turn a bit back again. The budget deal with the Conservatives and the Liberals created new tensions among the left wing parties and internally in some of the government parties. Furthermore, it allowed Lars Løkke Rasmussen to once again stand beside the government and talk about being a responsible opposition which has the clout to pull the country in the right direction instead of talking about first class flights.
Also, in addition to Bødskov's resignation, the Social Liberal Minister for Development Cooperation Christian Friis Bach had to resign recently, also due to lying. He had said that the government, which as a co-funder had a seat in the Global Green Growth Institute's board, had not approved the expensive travel rules which Løkke Rasmussen travelled according to. However, they actually had done just that. This part has helped Rasmussen a bit as he used that as a part of his defence, but when the minister said they didn't accept the rules, the tabloid who led the campaign against Rasmussen had a front page which simply said "liar" and accused Rasmussen of making the travel rules himself.

The latest average has 46.5 % for the left-wing parties, and 53.5 % for the right-wing parties. Before the travel case, the average said 43 % for the left-wing parties and 57 % for the right-wing parties.

Wishing Happy Holidays to all of our posters from Scandinavia (except Gustaf, to whom I wish a pleasant, but mediocre holiday)

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And for Gustaf:
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Merry Christmas. As a political note, I can say that the DF/DPP candidate did not become Mayor in Hvidovre; he ended up supporting the incumbent Social Democrat. However, a part of that deal was that the kommune will now spend more money on celebrating Christmas, including a Christmas tree at the main square, and that the institutions shall serve traditional Danish food.

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An important fightback in the War on Christmas.

Foreign Minister resigns due to health problems
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The Danish Foreign Minister Villy Søvndal (SF/SPP) today withdrew from politics due to health problems. The Minister has been on a leave of absence since October when he suffered a coronary. A few days later his wife had a heart attack. So due to him and his wife's serious health problems, he is retiring from politics; i.e. not only as a Minister, but also as a MP.

The replacement will be named tomorrow, and since there are now two major posts that need to be filled, it would probably require some reshuffling.

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Two ministers were promoted and two new ministers were appointed at today's reshuffle. From the left in the picture we have Jonas Dahl, (SF/SPP) the new Minister of Taxation; Karen Hækkerup, a Social Democrat promoted from Minister of Food, Agriculture and Fisheries to Minister of Justice; the PM; Holger K. Nielsen (SF/SPP) promoted from Minister of Taxation to Foreign Minister; and Dan Jørgensen, who was leader of the Socialdemocratic MEPs and is now Minister of Food, Agriculture and Fisheries.

It is quite remarkable that Holger K. Nielsen is now the Danish Foreign Minister. He was the leader of the SF/SPP before Villy Søvndal, and is probably mostly remembered for his Eurosceptic views. He was the leading voice in the successful campaign against the Maastricht Treaty in 1992 with his famous slogan "Holger og konen siger nej til unionen (Holger and his wife say no to the union)", it rhimes in Danish ;). Therefore, it was very important for the yes-parties to convince him to support the Maastricht Treaty at the second referendum, so he more or less dictated the four Danish opt-outs. When four opt-outs were accepted, he supported a yes in the second referendum. He was still opposed to the euro in the 2000 referendum, but like most of the SF/SPP he has become much more positive towards the EU and today declared himself an "almost full-blown European". Ironically, he is now in a position where he fights to get the opt-outs removed. The government wrote in its program that there were gonna be referendums about two of the opt-outs, defence and JHA, but no date has been set yet, so it's doubtful whether it's actually gonna happen. The previous government made the same promise without fulfilling it.

Dan Jørgensen was also a slightly controversial appointment due to some of the strong views that he has earlier expressed in that area. He has been very critical of the conditions in the farms which he has called cruelty to animals, he wanted cage eggs to have warning pictures like tobacco, and he wanted to ban mink skin production. The Danish mink industry exports for nearly 10 billion kr (1,34 billion euro) a year.

Though presumably only to the highly limited extent that anything can rhyme in Danish... :P

What is this Danish you speak off? I think you mean the sound of choking on too much food in your mouth. 

I recommend this brilliant clip, from the Norwegian comedy show Ut i vår hage. It pretty much tells you all you need to know about the state of the Danish language. (Almost entirely in English, so can be viewed by our non-Nordic friends as well). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-mOy8VUEBk (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-mOy8VUEBk)

And perhaps even more about the state of the Norwegian humour ;)

Ouch. :p

In our defense, while there are many terrible Norwegians comedians, Eia/Tufte are often pretty good.

Of course, the comments section on that page is far funnier than the clip itself (as tends to be the case on youtube).

How has that gone down in Denmark?

I thought Helle Thorning Schmidt was already seen as quite aloof after things like this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cnx4NUQsTGA

Pretty well. A few has referred to some of the negative treatment it got in some British and American newspapers so it could damage her/Denmark's reputation, but the vast majority thinks it's funny and Twitter and Facebook has been flooded with all sorts of politician and political commentator selfies.

Here two of the Liberal Alliance MPs make a selfie with Helle: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqp9yRxgaIQ

First Gentleman of Denmark, Stephen Kinnock is thinking of running for the UK parliament in the Aberavon (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aberavon_%28UK_Parliament_constituency%29) constituency, a historically ultra-safe Labour seat where the incumbent is retiring.

Interesting timing: elections due in both the UK and Denmark in 2015 (probably sooner for Denmark). Maybe the couple have got Helle down as a one-term wonder.

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/12/17/helle-thorning-schmidt-stephen-kinnock_n_4461847.html

Perhaps, but then maybe he's just politically ambitious in his own right.

Nah, not unless the polls change further in the government's favour. Early elections are rarely called if a government is trailing badly.

As for the last sentence in your post, I think that's probably correct. Though they have apparently often been a "long-distance" couple, so even if HTS were to win, it might not be much of a problem.

Recently two young and prominent Danish SDs from the party's left wing, Peter Hummelgaard (ex SD youth league chairman) and Matthias Tesfaye (ex SPP deputy chairman with immigrant and working class background), claimed that SD and DPP should form a broad alliance which could form an alternative majority and be the axis Danish politics would resolve around. They where supported by several left wing MPs and councillors, but the party leadership (from the right wing) was not amused.

What is your take on this? Should SD give up on social liberal value politics and form alliance with right wing populists to defend the welfare state?

Is this an idea that's relevant in other European countries where SD left wingers/traditionalist are under pressure from their own ("neo-liberal" in their view) right wing? Or is it just because our "right wing" populists are so relatively leftist on welfare issues.

Tesfaye and Hummelgaard agree with DPP that:

- Danish food culture should be represented in all public institutions (yes, we do care about our pork roast and meatballs in Denmark..)
- It should not be voluntary for tenant associations to opt out of Danish TV-channels in their cable packages.
- Danish should be the dominant language everywhere in the public sphere. Other languages only  a supplement.
- Danish (ie Christian) festivals should be celebrated and not replaced by Muslim

Their reasoning:

"Danes are willing to pay taxes to a social model, which takes care of the sick, the elderly and socially vulnerable, but its a prerequisite that there is a social and cultural community in the population. Therefore all steps towards parallel societies is a direct threat to the welfare (state). Arab, Turkish and Somali culture should therefore not replace Danish culture, but supplement it.
Its a political job to make this distinction, so that the welfare state has strong cultural pillars and institutions. A job SD has had difficulties doing, but which we think the small miracle in Hvidovre (a working class municipality west of Copenhagen where SD held on to power after making a deal with DPP) can help us with".

Matthias Tesfaye:

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Peter Hummelgaard Thomsen:

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A plate of meatballs:

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First of all, politicus - Congratulations to your well-selected combination of photos!

I actually see some similarity to Germany, where the CDU is prepared to give in to most of the SPD´s requests related to welfare (minimum wage, rent control, etc.), as long as they can avoid accepting dual citizenship (held by 5.4% of Lübeck's population, though officially non-existing), and legalising gay marriage.
The language issue is a bit more problematic in Germany, as Danish has already been registered  with the EU as official minority language. Same with food - the list of traditional German food will most likely become slightly longer than the Danish one. Moreover, banning pizza, French fries, Gyros and Döner might ultimately turn out to be rather unpopular here...

What is the ecologists' position on this? Wouldn't promoting Danish food culture put even more pressure on the shrinking herring population in the Baltic Sea?

Hope you enjoyed your Christmas meat balls Our roasted goose was delicious.  
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There is a big difference between things like that coming from conservatives and from SD left wingers. Its the intra party aspect, where SD left wingers are marginalized by a dominant right wing, I find interesting. Is cooperation between "right wing" populists and SD left wingers  something we will see in the future, because those two groups are the only major groups outside of the neo-liberal consensus?
I think right wing populists are too genuinely rightist in most countries, but I was interested in your thoughts.

Well, if you read the German grand coalition compromise the other way round, the SPD was prepared to concede on issues like dual citizenship, gay marriage and protecting privacy to get their social policy agenda through. They didn't have to revert to silly "food culture" arguments, though, because they knew Angela Merkel was populist enough to give in on issues that the majority of the electorate supported.

The Danish intra-party aspect is interesting and special, indeed. A similar debate took place within the SPD a few years ago, but it was triggered by a right-winger (read: fiscal conservative), namely Thilo Sarrazin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thilo_Sarrazin). That debate had the "modernisation" and the "social justice" wings inside the SPD uniting against a common internal enemy. Ultimately, with the Grand Coalition, the "social justice" wing looks forward to achieving a good part of their objectives, while "modernisation" has mostly been postponed to 2017 at earliest.

As concerns other European countries, I could imagine Austria's and Italy's right wing populists being prepared for similar deals, but I doubt the political left there will make them an offer as generous as the current Danish one (well, in Italy, you never know...).

On a side note: In the "Danish municipal elections" thread, I noted a surprisingly high share of local candidates with migration background, across the whole political spectrum, which gave me the impression that integration is working quite well in Denmark (at least compared to Germany). So, what is this debate all about?

I think we have the same thing in Finland when the SDP is trying to get the conservative working class voters back from the right-wing populists by saying things like "when in Rome, act like a roman" and trying to avoid socially liberal themes like gender neutral marriage and immigration. This is of course more common among the old SDP actives than in the younger wing.

Agreement on Train Fund
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Persons in picture from left: Minister of Transport Pia Olsen Dyhr (SF), Social Democrat spokesperson on transport Rasmus Prehn,  DF spokesperson on transport Kim Christiansen,  Social Liberal spokesperson on transport Andreas Steenberg (the one to the right of those in the back), Enhedslisten spokesperson on transport Henning Hyllested.

Today the Danish Government, Enhedslisten and DF made an agreement on setting up a Train Fund which will spend 28,5 billion kroner (3,82 billion euro) on train projects over the next decade or so. The most important goal of the investment is the introduction of the so-called "hour-model" which will mean that it will only take one hour to travel from one of the four big cities to the next (Aalborg, Aarhus, Odense, Copenhagen). The agreement has been in the pipeline for a while, but disagreements about how the airport in Billund should be connected to the railway system held it back for a while. DF wanted a light railway line, while the others just wanted a normal railway system. In the agreement, it is not completely decided which it shall be, but it seems like DF has backed down.
The fund is financed by increasing taxes on some of the companies which are extracting oil and gas in the North Sea, so that all the companies are now following the same tax level. Venstre (Liberals), Conservatives, and Liberal Alliance are not a part of the agreement as they don't believe in the financing of the fund. They think the extra taxes will mean that some companies will stop their investments and extractions in the area, which means that the expected funds will not materialize and jobs will be lost.

As a member of the Danish Social Democrats, I would say that the internal coalition in the party are relative stable at this point. Thorning, for all the bad things which can be said about her, have been quite good at rewarding the different fraction in the party, at the same time the mix of the fear of internal conflict so close to the next election, and the hope which came from the Løkke's problem with the GGGI (which have energised the Party), mean that the Social Democrats right now support her. In fact together with the improvement in the economy, the fact that she has more or less taken the power in the government back from the Social Liberals, mean that she has more backing now than any time since the election.


DPP are quite different from most Far Right Parties in Europe, it's a very professional run party, there are few to no connections to the extreme right, and they keep their agreements. It make it hard to avoid making deals with them. The old Progress Party was more like other European Far Right parties, which was why it was kept outside influence.


Danish municipalities have more power than the average European municipality, so it's more important position than in other countries, at the same time most Danish parties favour many personal votes in the election, while the municipalities are small enough that in most municipalities 150 personal votes are enough to break the party list and become 2 or 3 elected by a party. At the same time while fewer immigrants votes (30-40%), the ones who vote tend to vote personal on people they know (I have only anecdotal evidence for this). This mean that while there are fewer immigrants on the lists, they are more likely to be elected, especially among the bigger parties.

Of course some of the "immigrants" elected are not immigrants at all. In Lyngby-Taarbæk an Upper Class Conservative stronghold, they have elected Sofia Osmani. While her father was an Indian immigrants, she see herself as Danish, and while a few media have described her as coming from an immigrant background (which she objected to, this may seem weird when described in English, but it's just something lost in translation, not because she deny her father's foreign background), most media have ignored her foreign name.

While there have been some "discussion" among the Danish SDP about immigration, the whole gender neutrality discussion have died out in the party without further ado. SDP support women rights, but the whole gender neutrality from gender neutral marriage, gender neutral ID and the use of Hen (an artificial gender neutral first person pronoun created by the Swedes) are simply seen as non issues or a bad joke by the vast majority of the party. The big internal discussion about gender issues in the party have been about ban on prostitution and quotas for women in boards of directors.

Greenlandic Prime Minister Aleqa Hammond is in trouble since her Social Democratic party Siumuts former chairman Hans Enoksen (who was Prime Minister 2002-09) broke with the party a week ago and started getting signatures to get a new party on the ballot for the next election. Her majority is down to a paltry 16-15 which basically means anybody in her party or its Liberal/Unionist partner Atassut can blackmail her by threatening to cross over to Enoksen.

Enoksens excuse for quitting was that Hammonds life partner Tom Ostermann got a a cushy consultant job in the Ministry of Fishery, and even though Hammond sacrificed the Minister of Fishing Karl Lyberth (one of her closest allies in the party) it gave Enoksen the excuse he needed to jump ship. The old "village partisan" - who is famous for claiming he doesn't speak a word of Danish and is a former shopkeeper in a village of 50 in Northern Greenland - has been dissatisfied with not getting into the cabinet or becoming chairman of  parliament after Siumut regained power in 2013 after a 4 year break in their otherwise unbroken line of governments since Greenland got autonomy in 1979.

Enoksens time as Premier was marred with corruption and nepotism, but he is still widely popular in the small coastal settlements (bygder) where 15% of Greenlanders live. His new party is called Naleraq (guiding point) and has fishing rights for small fishermen, Greenlandization of society and larger investments in the periphery as their main rallying points. Since the centre/periphery cleavage is the most important in Greenlandic politics and the Inuit nationalists/populists in Partii Inuit are more or less falling apart after flip-flopping on abolishing the ban on uranium export Enoksen has a good chance of succeeding.

Observers speculate whether Hammond will go for a quick election before Enoksen is ready to do battle or if she will try to hang on to power as long as she can. Meanwhile the pressure from Hammonds critics to summon an extraordinary congress in Siumut is mounting all over the country. Something Hammond will try to avoid if at all possible.

Hammond and Ostermann.

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Enter Goldman Sachs, Exit SF (SPP)?

The current discussions about the state's pending sale of 19 percent of DONG Energy, Denmark's largest energy company, to the American investment bank Goldman Sachs have made discussions about SF's(SPP) presence in the government resurface. Tomorrow, the day before the Financial Committee will make the final decision on the sale, the party's parliamentary group and executive committee will have an extraordinary meeting to discuss whether the party should support the sale, and whether the party can continue in the government. The SF MP Karsten Hønge, who just entered parliament as a stand-in for Anne Baastrup who is on a leave of absence due to her role in the case which ended with the resignation of the Minister of Justice Morten Bødskov, said to Jyllands-Posten today: "We are on the edge, and bloody playing with our existence. As the situation has developed, I lean towards leaving the government". This is a quite extraordinary statement from a MP from a government party, but he has been a relatively outspoken critic of many of the government's decisions before entering parliament.

The Danish state currently owns 81 % of DONG Energy, but a sale of parts of DONG Energy has been on the agenda for a while. It was planned to happen in 2008 but to the unrest in the financial markets, the sale was postponed at the time. After a terrible 2012 result with a loss of 4 billion kr (0,54 euro), the company needed capital so the plans to sell parts of it were then restarted. A number of funds and investment banks made offers, and in September 2013 the Ministry of Finance reached an agreement for selling 21 % of the company to different investors; the large majority (19%) of this sale was to Goldman Sachs. The sale has been criticized from a number of sides, among them former Social Democrat PM Poul Nyrup Rasmussen and Enhedslisten. DF (DPP) originally supported the deal, but has now turned around completely and is opposed to the deal. The main points of criticism: Goldman Sachs played a big part in the financial crisis and ethically it would be wrong to do business with them, Goldman Sachs will buy the shares via companies in Luxembourg, Delaware and Cayman Islands to reduce the amount of tax they must pay in Denmark, Goldman Sachs will get a veto on changes to the company's overall strategy, and that the current environment is not a good one to sell in so a higher price could be achieved later. The government and Venstre (Liberals), the Conservatives and the Liberal Alliance support the deal.

With regards to SF, I think the party's top leadership, i.e. the ministers and a few others, will try to keep the party in the government, while a fairly great number of the regular members of the executive committee and the parliamentary group will be opposed to the sale, and might want to leave the government. I think they will end up staying in the government, but as the party leadership election in 2012 showed, it can be hard for outsiders to predict about the inner workings of the party.

SF accepted the sale in today's meeting. The Executive Committee voted on the deal; 10 were in favour, 7 against. One of those 7 was the deputy leader Peter Westermann, who was an outspoken Vilhelmsen-supporter in the leadership election. Due to the defeat in the vote, Westermann has now resigned from his position as deputy leader.

EDIT: Political and financial spokesperson Lisbeth Bech Poulsen has now resigned from her posts as well as she also belonged to the no-side. More resignations and perhaps even defections are probably to follow over the next days.

The evening ended in an almost farcical way. Enhedslisten has been able to move the case from the Financial Committee into the full Folketing by proposing a postponement of the sale. This will be voted on tomorrow morning before the vote in the Financial Committee confirming the sale. This means that it is no longer just interesting how SF's member of the Financial Committee will vote; all SF MPs have to make up their mind.

The extraordinary meeting today had lasted a long time, and for the last 1-2 hours there has been live television from the building where the meeting took place. We have watched all the Ministers, MPs and members of the Executive Committee leave the building, one by one and surrounded by journalists and cameras, and answering vaguely or doubtfully about how/whether they will vote on the Enhedslisten proposal, and whether the party will remain in the government. One of the last to leave was Minister of Transportation Pia Olsen Dyhr who stated that the party could not continue in government if anybody voted against the deal tomorrow; i.e. voting for Enhedslisten's proposal. I hope it all makes some sense, but it has been a quite chaotic meeting and process; a televised meltdown. To sum up, a few key figures in the party have already resigned from their posts and more will propably follow. Tomorrow, the main point of interest will probably be to see how many SF MPs attend the parliamentary session and how they vote. If too many abstain or if somebody votes yes to Enhedslisten's proposal, SF could very well end up leaving the government after all. If they don't make the decision themselves, their government partners might make it for them.

Several media are now reporting that SF is leaving the government, party leader Annette Vilhelmsen is resigning and that an extraordinary conference will be called.

The parliamentary session at 10.00 with Enhedslisten's proposal can probably be followed here: http://www.ft.dk/webtv/video/20131/salen/47.aspx

I'm not sure it will be easy to follow, but the tense situation should be possible to sense.

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MP Uffe Elbæk, a former Radikal (Social Liberal) Minister in this government, who has started his own party Alternativet (Alternative), is speaking in favour of Enhedslisten's proposal of postponing the deal. A fitting sweater for today, when looking at SF.

Enhedslisten proposal was rejected. 30 votes in favour, 94 against, 2 neither for nor against. Five SF MPs do not want the sale to happen, which should be one of the main reasons why the SF leader is resigning. Press conference at 10.30 where more will be disclosed. I would think that the Social Democrats and the Social Liberals would prefer to continue with a new SR-government, and not an election as all polls are still predicting a heavy defeat for the left wing. 

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Most of the things above have now been confirmed. SF (SPP) leaves the government, party leader Annette Vilhelmsen resigns, and an extraordinary party conference will be held shortly. PM Helle Thorning-Schmidt has confirmed that the government will continue as a coalition between the Social Democrats and the Radikale (Social Liberals), and that there will not be an election now. In the next day or two, she is expected to present her new government as the two parties now need to fill up the vacant posts.

SF will still vote in favour of the sale in the Financial Committee later today in accordance with the decision made by the party's Executive Committee yesterday. It will be interesting to follow SF in the coming weeks. Party members might literally be leaving left and right. A number of left-leaning SF members might still leave the party as it accepted the sale, although a number of them might hope that things get better now that it has left the government. The remaining right-leaning SF members, and perhaps even some ministers, might defect to the Social Democrats as they are disappointed that the party has left the government and will probably not be able to enter another government for many years. MP Ole Sohn, the former Minister for Business and Growth, a close ally of former leader Villy Søvndal and one of the masterminds behind the plan to make SF enter the government, has said that that the will continue to support all of the government's decisions. That will probably bring him into the conflict with SF, so he could very well leave/be forced to leave at least the parliamentary group.
It will of course also be interesting to see who the new SF leader will be. Will one of the current ministers want to be a leader of a party where the members have been opposed to many of the government's decisions and where a new government participation looks unlikely for a long time? Will the members choose a new left-leaning backbecher, like Annette Vilhelmsen, after her less than impressive period as a leader?

Minister of Health Astrid Kragh has left SPP and joined SD. She battled Vilhelmsen for the leadership last year and was the last remaining representative from the "workerite" right wing (basically SDs in all but name) among the SPP ministers.

There is some speculation as to whether she can hang on in the cabinet as an SD-er, since she has been fairly efficient and is a political talent (and they don't have that many of those in SD), but I doubt it.

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How will SF leaving the coalition affect the government? Will Social Democrats and Social Liberals continue a minority government, hoping for parliamentary support from SF in addition to Enhedslisten? Or will they now look for an additional partner, maybe DPP? While I understand that the government is not keen on new elections, will they really be able to avoid them?

SD and the Social Liberals will continue - and are probably relieved to get rid of their troublemsome partner. SPP has no choice but to support the government. An election now would be a disaster for them. They have been polling as low as 3%, dangerously close to the 2% threshold. They are also without a leader until a  new one is elected in March.

I doubt that the Red Greens will pull the plug on the government right now. They dont want a Liberal government. They seem to have decided to let the governmet hang on for lack of a better alternative, without actively supporting it.

DPP and the Social Liberals are opposites and hate each other. The present SD leadership would never exchange the Social Liberals with DDP, as they basically agree with them on economics and the need for "trimming" the welfare state. And DPP is still seen as the enemy by most SDs.

Its worth noticing that ex deputy chairman Peter Westermann, who is a left winger, is hardly a backbencher anymore - but he is probably too young (late 20s).

Almost all possible candidates have passed on the leadership. Only two serious contenders remain. Ex Minister of Taxes Jonas Dahl,who is a youngish centrist without affiliation to any of the wings and ex Minister of Transport Pia Olsen Dyhr (42) from the Green right wing (SPP has - or had - two right wings, one "workerite" quasi-SD and one quasi-social liberal Green! But the top "workerites" have almost entirely left the party). None of them have declared their candidacy yet.
Pia Olsen Dyhr is uncharismatic and lost a leadership election to former chairman Villy Søvndahl (then a leftist, but later founder of the workerite wing) back in 2005 and the Greens are (and has always been) a minority within the party, but now may be her chance for lack of good alternatives.

It will probably make the internal workings in the coalition function better as they don't have to deal with SF. Also they will avoid that the noise in SF will overshadow most of the deals that the coalition makes.
SF has already guaranteed parliamentary support for the new SR-coalition. SF don't want an election right now with the party in complete disarray and without a new leader until at the earliest in the beginning of March where the extraordinary party conference will be held. If the government is to fall, it is because of Enhedslisten and that looks very unlikely as well. Enhedslisten will have a very hard time defending new elections, and in all likelyhood a new right-wing government. Enhedslisten have already put up with so many government decisions which they did not like that it is hard to imagine that something could make them tear down the government.
Therefore, there is no need for an additional partner. This will not change much for the government. The policies will probably be fairly similar and their strategic position is not much different. When they make a agreement with the left, the problem will still be to get Enhedslisten to agree, and it might be even easier to make agreements with Venstre (Liberals) and the Conservatives now that that SF is not in the government.
The situation regarding a new election has not changed either. The government can decide for themselves when to call new elections, as the polls are still bad this probably means as late as possible, unless the unlikely situation where Enhedslisten pulls them down occurs.

The most recent polling average, composed 27 January by Berlingske (compared to 2011 election):

Social Democrats 21.1 % (-3.7 %) 37 seats (-7)
Social Liberals 8.3 % (-1.2%) 15 (-2)
Conservatives 4.5 % (-0.4%) 8 (=)
SF 4.1 % (-5.1%) 7 (-9)
Liberal Alliance 5.0 % (=) 9 (=)
Christian Democrats 0.6 % (-0.2%) 0 (=)
DF 18.1 % (+5.8 %) 32 (+10)
Liberals 27.6 % (+0.9%) 48 (+1)
Enhedslisten 10.7 % (+4.0%) 19 (+7)

Left wing 44.2 % (-6.0%) 78 (-11)
Right wing 55.8 % (+6.1 %) 97 (+11)

With large crowds of protesters outside parliament demanding the governments resignation and "real democracy" the Greenlandic government survived its first major test after the recent scandals as the new Minister of Fishing was approved with a comfortable 18-13 majority, but not without major verbal infighting and allegations of camaraderie and nepotism + misinforming and misleading the people and the parliament. Former PM Hans Enoksen has demanded Deputy Chairman of Naalakkersuisut (ie Deputy Prime Minister) and Minister of Transportation Steen Lynge's resignation due to Lynge lying about freight prices from the government controlled sea carrier Royal Arctic Line. He was backed by IA and the Democrats from the old opposition demanding immediate government resignation. The new Minister of Fishing Finn Karlsen was accused of having "gambled with Greenlands natural resources" by ignoring warnings from biologists and allowing overfishing, while in office last time.

Meanwhile the chairman of the Democrats Jens B. Frederiksen is under increasing pressure to resign because he has taken on a cushy job as Deputy Managing Director for the Canadian mining cooperation True North Gems Greenland.  He said that he would still be chairman of his party  "by the end of the week", but declined to answer when reporters asked him whether he would also still be leader "by the end of the month". So, bye, bye Jensi... (I guess, but you never know in Greenland).

Prime Minister Aleqa Hammond has some time to gather her Siumut-loyalist troops and stabilize the situation as the parliament Inatsisartut doesn't regather until the 18th of March.

Interesting fact: According to a poll published by DR 76% of centre-right voters are against the sale of DONG shares so Goldman-Sachs. So its generally unpopular in the Danish population, not just among leftists.

SPP Deputy Chairman Mette Touborg has stepped down and since the other chairman Peter Westermann has already resigned the party is now de facto leaderless.

Former chairman of the aid agency Mellemfolkeligt Samvirke Trine Pertou Mach is a possible contender for the leadership position. She is a solid left winger and has more charisma than the other two.

Observers generally believe that Pia Olsen Dyhr is too tainted by the failure of the government project. So it looks like either a quiet and somewhat boring compromise candidate with continued support for most of the governments policies or a sharp turn to the left trying to regain voters from the Red Green Alliance.

 

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Minister of Enviroment Ida Auken leaves SF and joins Radikale (Social Liberals). She was probably the most popular SFer currrently, and has been a constant in the top 5 of the most popular ministers. Perhaps the biggest surprise defection so far. Interesting to see whether her mom, SF MEP Margrethe Auken, follows her. I wouldn't think so, but you can hardly rule out anything in SF currently.
The move was announced on Facebook, and her reasoning for joining Radikale is this: "I'm changing to the Radikale because I've been agreeing with them on value politics* for a long time now, because they have an international outlook, and realize that the economy and the environment must play together, not against each other". Ida Auken has arguably never focused much on solidarity, equality etc, and instead focused on the environment, the climate and international cooperation, but still this is a rather surprising move. The Radikale has been seen as the main culprit by many in SF, and their economy polices are far away from that of SF.

* Normally used for referring to things like immigration, law and order etc.


EDIT: Mom is not too pleased. "I'm sad and angry" Margrethe Auken says to Ritzau.

Kind of sad Auken chose to join the Social Liberals it would have been far more interesting if she teamed up with Uffe Elbæks The Alternative, which looks like it could evolve into something resembling the German Greens. But its obviously a safer career move.

The "green" wing in their parliament group is now reduced to ex-chairman candidate from the 90s 60+ Steen Gade, a bitchy theologian from Northern Jutland and Pia Olsen Dyhr, who has not yet declared her candidacy for the chairmanship, but said she will in all likelyhood leave the party if the left wing wins. So it looks like the party will fragment further.
Most pundits and political journalists think Olsen Dyhr will run and win, but I think the left wing will win - they got far more grassroot support and are the core of the party. Especially if Pertou  Mach runs. Choosing Jonas Dahl as a compromise candidate looks increasingly unlikely because the warring fractions don't seem to be interested in a compromise.

It might also be best for SPP to get a clear leftist platform and go back to basics, after all voters generally expect the chairman of a party named the Socialist Peoples Party to be a, ya know, socialist.

Ex Greenlandic Premier and Siumut deserter Hans Enoksen got his new Partii Naleraq approved by the election board today after getting the necessary 964 signatures. So he is now ready to challenge his successor and former boss Aleqa Hammond in the next election.

Why is there such poor "party loyalty" amongst Danish politicians? Seems like relatively prominent ones switch between the various parties in Folketinget all the time. That kind of stuff hardly ever happens elsewhere in Scandinavia.

I don't thing it happens that often. I cant remember many prominent or semi-prominent ones outside of the SPP. Unless you count Pia Kjærsgaard leaving the dying Progressive Party back in 1995, but that was a split and not a jump  and Nasser Khader and Anders Samuelsens New Alliance, which was also a split more than a jump. Of course Khader then jumped to the Conservatives and became a bit of a joke.

Splits are more popular because we have 2% threshold, so its easier than in other Nordic countries.

Karen Jespersen, ex minister, left SD for the Liberals, but with her staunch anti-immigration/anti-Islam views she was clearly out of sync with her old party.

Other have been from dying or hopeless parties:

Tove Videbæk/Bodil Konbek, the two rivals from each wing of the Christian Democracts joining SD and Conservatives and Tom Behnke going from the dying Progressive Party to the Conservatives.

SPP is a special case. The party is in a process of disintegration. And it has moved very far away from its roots and in the process attracted some people who are just not at home in a traditional socialist party. Most of the jumpers are young people attracted to the success of folksy ex-leader Villy Søvndahl back when he was popular in 2008-10. Søvndahl moved the party far to the right on immigration and law & order and in 2009 the party chose a programme not even mentioning socialism. Now that the party is no longer popular and it looks like its going back to its red roots, they have no reason to stay.

Found this quote:

"Der er ingen tvivl om, at det er blevet lettere at skifte parti for både politisk engagerede mennesker og for folkevalgte. Politik er i dag for mange i højere grad blevet et værktøj til at fremme et mål, end det er en kulturbestemt indstilling til tilværelsen.”

This trend with a shift from culture based world view to a means to an end may be slighly more significant in Denmark. But still I should think it was a general trend.

tl;dr: apart from SPP disintegrating there aren't that many IMO and most leave to start new parties, trying to get their politics represented + we have a 2 threshold, not 4% ;)

New Megafon poll has DPP in 2nd place ahead of SD after the unpopular DONG-sale.


SD: 18,8 pct. (31. jan.) - 21,7 pct (22. jan.) - 24,8 pct. (2011)
Social Liberals: 7,4 pct. (31. jan.) - 6,6 pct. (22. jan.) - 9,5 pct. (2011)
Conservatives: 4,5 pct. (31. jan.) - 4,6 pct. (22. jan.) - 4,9 pct. (2011)
SPP: 4,5 pct. (31. jan.) - 5,6 pct. (22. jan.) - 9,2 pct. (2011)
Liberal Alliance: 5,1 pct. (31. jan.) - 5,2 pct. (22. jan.) - 5,0 pct. (2011)
Christian Democrats: 0,4 pct. (31. jan.) - 0,6 pct. (22. jan.) - 0,8 pct. (2011)
DPP: 20,1 pct. (31. jan.) - 16,1 pct. (22. jan.) - 12,3 pct. (2011)
Liberals: 26,7 pct. (31. jan.) - 27,5 pct. (22. jan.) - 26,7 pct. (2011)
Red Green Alliance: 12,2 pct. (31. jan.) - 11,6 pct. (22. jan.) - 6,7 pct. (2011)

Not to insult anybody, but I think everyone get why she didn't embraced the Alternative, it honestly it look at best like something like Ny Alliance, just with less clear politic and without a widely popular front man, in fact it doesn't even seem to have politic yet, just meta-politic of bringing something new to Danish politics. As for worst case it simply seem to be Retsforbundet anno 2014. While it may make a niche for itself in Danish politics, weirded thing have been seen, I think they will go the same way as most new parties in Danish politics.

Ida Auken clearly became Social Liberal because she wanted to have influence on Danish politics, and there the Social Liberals wasn't a bad choice.

All true and fairly obvious. Like I have stated earlier the "green" wing of SPP is already quasi-Social Liberal too begin with, so its no surprise that a career girl like her join them. If she had had another family background, she would likely have gone that road to begin with.

All I was saying that it would have been more interesting if she had had the guts to try develop The Alternative into something resembling the German Greens. I think The Alternative is a far more solid project than New Alliance since its based upon the idea that increased quality of life should be achieved without using more of scarce resources. This idea takes you in a particular direction and makes you choose particular solutions. like a steady state economy, and is therefore different than the wishy-washy centrism and "humanism" of New Alliance.

I agree that it might get the faith of Retsforbundet (which was not a bad party in my opinion), since idea based politics that doesnt fit nicely into the traditional left-right axis is a hard game to succeed in.

Still Retsforbundet was basically torn between liberalistic principles and the anti-speculation/communal land ownership, and later green and anti-EU, elements that appealed to leftists. I think this crowd will be more homogenous, which will help them.

Anyway: New inspiration is badly needed in the current situation where most traditional parties have ran out of fresh ideas regarding societys fundamental problems and are basically just letting the central administration develop "pragmatic" solutions.

New ministers:

Social Liberals:

Martin Lidegaard, moves from Minister of Climate to the Ministry of Foregin Ministry which gets the European affairs back. They have given up on the silly idea of splitting foreign affairs in 4 parts and its now down to 2 with international trade going to the Ministry of Development.

Morten Østergaard, no. 2 in the Social Liberals hierarchy, moves from Research and Universities to Ministry of Taxes, making him a part of economic policy development and becomes one of the four members of the powerfull Economic Committee.

EU-parliamentarian Sofie Carsten Nielsen new Minister of Education and Research.

Rasmus Helveg Petersen from the Helveg Petersen political dynasty new Minister of Climate and Energy.

Manu Sareen new Minister of Welfare ("Social Minister")

SD:

All rounder Nick Hækkerup is new Minister of Health after Astrid Krag, as expected she didn't get to keep her portfolio despite the party swoop.

Political spokesperson Magnus Heunicke new Minister of Transportation.

Kirsten Brosbøl new minister of the Environment.

Mogens Jensen, best known as a great Nyrup Rasmussen impersonater is new Minister of Development and Trade.

The government is down from 22 to 20 ministers - 13 SDs and 7 Social Liberals.

Yes I agree, clearly she only chosen SPP rather than the Social Liberals because of her mother's membership.


I think we run into a fundamental difference here, I think the Alternative are fundamental a party attempting to move into an already full political niche and the new thing they have to offered are ... well purely structural. I don't see a fundamental difference from SL, UL or SPP on environment, economical I have no idea what they offer yet, expect they don't call themselves socialists and structural they seem to offer the bottom up structure of UL and SPP. So I personal I see them as SL with the internal structure or UL. After SPP collapse I don't see that as a selling issue.



I didn't have a problem Retforbundet, but the thing which killed them, was not their politic, but decentral structur which made cooperation and compromises almost impossible.


I agree that it's the fundamental problem in Danish politics, the problem are that I don't see the Alternative as the solution, the Chaos Pilot (a education founded by Elbæk) have never lived up to the promises of bringing the wild creativity of the artistic world (Elbæk's own words) into the private sector, most Chaos Pilots have ended up in the public or semi-public sector. Honestly I see Elbæk as mostly full of hot air, and the Alternative seem just one more hot air project. But while with the Chaos Pilots he only needed to convince a few "latte drinkers" (sorry don't hit me) in the public administration, here he will have to convince at least several procents of the voters which already have several green alternatives. I don't think he will succeed here, it's a relative niche he goes after and it's already full.

And life sort of imitates art again... Borgen saw the SD and SL equivalents end up as a minority government when the Greens (their SPP) pulled out.

Don't you mean Labour and Moderates? ;)

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Another SF MP leaves the party. As expected, Ole Sohn moves to the Social Democrats as well. He was a long time member of the Communist Party, and led it from 1987 to 1991. The picture above is from a greeting with Erich Honecker during the celebrations of DDR's 40 year anniversary. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, he joined SF in 1992. He played a key role in Villy Søvndal's plan to make the party ready for government, and after the 2011 election he was made Minister for Business and Growth. When Villy Søvndal resigned as a party leader in 2012, he announced that he was not running at the next general election and that he would make his post as a minister available for the new SF leader. Since then, he hasn't been very active, but in the last couple of weeks, he has returned with a harsh criticism of the left wing of SF, who in the end made the party pull out of the government. As mentioned earlier, he announced that he was still going to support everything the government proposed, so this move was quite inevitable.

Well, he is about to retire after the next election to run his publishing company, but still: good luck with the former Comrade in Chief SD!

Edit: I see he sold the company in December, so retirement I guess.

Comrades turned social-democratic are not necessarily the worst politicians - see Willy Brandt.

Or Denis Healey.

Yes, that's what I meant, the equivalents in the show to the two RL parties.

All remaining 12 members of SPPs parliamentary group backs former Minister of Transport Pia Olsen Dyhr from the party's "green" right wing as new chairman of the SPP. So it looks like a shoe in for Olsen Dyhr who lost a chairmanship election back in 2005. Its a bit surprising that the left wing that has 7 members doesn't want to field an opponent, but all possible candidates have declined.

Playing a sort of sub-John Golding game?

I really don't see any among them, who would be able to get the chairman post, and even if they did they would have to deal with losing the next election. Dyhr can at least blame the loss next election on others, as she was not the one which negotiated the government deal and didn't create chaos in the party.
 

I think everyone in SPP has already accepted that the next election is lost, so that's not really an issue and Olsen Dyhr is not a person that can get the disillusioned leftists back from the Red Greens.

You are right that there aren't any obvious leadership candidates on the left wing after Pertou Mach declined, but at this stage Olsen Dyhr is fairly isolated in the party. Her only allies in the party top are two 60+ - EU parliamentarian Margrethe Auken (mother of ex Environmental Minister Ida Auken) and Steen Gade (who will likely not run again) + ex group chairman Pernille Vigsø Bagge. Since the party will lose seats she is unlikely to get supporters elected. Before long the left wing will start to undermine her. Some journalist whose name I cant remember called it the Reds Taliban-stategy: Run to the hills and start reconquering every bit of territory until your opponents are only nominally in control, then eliminate them.

Basically I think SSP would be better of going back to their red roots straight away, its what a majority of the grassroots want and its their only chance to regain their position as the largest party on the left wing, which is pretty essential for their long term survival. Otherwise they will be squeezed between SD and the Red Greens and slowly die off.


I looked him up, but must admit I didn't get this one. How did the Labour left undermine Golding?

Peter Andersen. A 24 year old BA of Education student (and amateur poet and actor) has challenged Pia Olsen Dyhr for the SPP leadership "to get a debate in the party". So even though the entire leadership agreed on Olsen Dyhr the troubled party now has to go through almost a month of campaigning, and the protest vote on Andersen might be embarrassingly high.

EDIT: He didnt get the necesarry signatures to be a candidate. Nobody else declared their candidacy before the deadline this morning and Olsen Dyhr is thereby the new chairman of the troubled party.

In a Voxmeter poll this weekend SPP was down to 2,4%, dangerously close to the threshold. Further infighting could see them fall below it.

They didn't: he undermined them (that is, I was thinking of tactics adopted rather than which faction actually uses them). My fault for the confusion: assumed there would be more about his antics on his wiki bio than there is actually is.

Mostly I was thinking of the fact that he persuaded his fellow right-wingers on the NEC to let the Left put whatever they wanted in the 1983 manifesto, so that they copped all the blame for the inevitable electoral horror story. Which they did.

Okay, in that case I think you are right. Since the Reds dont have a credible chairman candidate (at least not one willing to run) among their parliamentarians, they likely think they might as well let the most prominent Green lead the party into the inevitable defeat and then take over and try to rebuild it as a more classical left wing party.

EDIT: Anyway, as of today Pia Olsen Dyhr is the new chairman. She is 42, has a MA in Politcal Science, is chairman of the partys youth organization, ex deputy chairman of a third world development aid organization.
She is the daughter of a cleaning lady and an alkoholized father on early retirement, whom she grew up with. So she has working class and tough upbringing credentials, which on paper makes her a good fit to reconquer some of the lost voters. Still her main interests are: climate, enviromental issues, consumer interests and international cooperation. So greenie. Her husband is a trade union bureaucrat who left SSP for SD together with all the rest of the "workerites", and that might be a problem for her image as well.
 

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Wilke analysis of voter movement since the 2011 election. At the top it says which party did you vote for in the 2011 election, and at the left it says which party would you vote for tomorrow; i.e. 11.8 % of those who voted for the Social Democrats in 2011 would vote for DF tomorrow. The two columns to the right are don't remember, and didn't vote.

Unfortunately, the poll only includes 989 respondents which I believe is a bit too small for polls like this. This makes for a few weird results for the small parties; e.g. I sincerely doubt that 50 % of the 2011 Christian Democrats would now vote for the Liberal Alliance. However, in general the poll looks valid.

The Social Democrats and SF have both lost around 10 % of their voters to DF, which is the main reason why the right-wing parties have a big lead in the polls. Both parties, but especially SF, have also lost several voters to Enhedslisten. And then, perhaps somewhat surprisingly, SF has also lost a huge amount of voters (24 %) to the Social Democrats. Several politicians have made the same move since the election. Some of the voters probably share the "workerite"-sentiment of those politicians who felt that SF did not really want to be in government, but it is arguably also just due to a general feeling of incompetence and internal bickering in SF.

Venstre have continued eating the Conservatives; a process that also took place before the 2011 election, and accelerated during the campaign when the Conservatives made their now infamous pact with the Social Liberals. The other right-wing parties, the Liberal Alliance and DF, are also eating their part of the Conservative cake.   

No child's play for the government

The issue of child benefits for EU workers continue to grow and might now threathen the government's existence. Enhedslisten is prepared to vote with the opposition on this issue, and says that if the government continues to administrate after EU rules and not the law approved in the Danish parliament, then there will be new elections.

This case is about when you should be entitled to child benefits in Denmark. The size of the child benefit depends on the age of the child; a parent of a 1-year old will get 4 404 kr (€590) every three months, while a parent of a 17-year old will get 2 745 kr (€368) every three months. A family can get a maximum of 35 000 (€4 690) a year in child benefits, and family with high incomes will get lower child benefits. In 2010, the government at the time tried to limit especially EU nationals' right to child benefits by demanding that the beneficiary have lived or worked in Denmark for at least two of the last ten years. However, last summer the EU Commission, after a complaint from a German citizen working in Denmark, notified the new Danish government that this law was not in accordance with EU law as it was discriminating against other EU citizens. The Danish Ministry of Justice agreed with this, and therefore the Danish government started to administrate according to EU law which has precedence. This has caused considerable criticism from the opposition.
A few days ago the government proposed a new law which removes the 2 out of 10 years rule for EU nationals, so that the law is consistent with EU law and with how things are actually being administrated. SF(SPP) supports the government, but the none of the other parties do. Instead the Conservatives have proposed a bill that says "the government should ensure that the payment of child benefits happens in accordance with the law that has been adopted in the Danish parliament". All the opposition parties and Enhedslisten have said that they will vote for the bill. Enhedslisten's spokesperson for Social Affairs, Finn Sørensen, said that "for us, it is deeply reprehensible that the government just bows down to the EU. A government has one job, which is to fight for what the Danish parliament decides. It is fundamentally contrary to the Danish constitution and principle of parlamentarism if a government will not follow the majority of the Folketing. If it does not want to do that, it has to call an election and see if it can get support for its policies." He does, however, add that Enhedslisten could be convinced to support the government's proposal, and thereby provide a majority, if substantial measures to fight social dumping are included in the government's bill.

It is hard to predict exactly how serious Enhedslisten are in its threats. On the one hand, an election will almost certainly provide a right-wing majority which the party could get blamed for. However, the relationship between the government and Enhedslisten is not rosy, and this would be a very popular case to take down the government on; fighting for the Danish welfare system and Danish sovereignty against the evil bureaucrats from Brussels and the Polish plumber. The Liberals and the Conservatives would probably not have acted much differently if in government, but they will of course use almost any case to bring down the government, and argue that the government should put up more of a fight against the Commission.
I think the most likely outcome is a deal with Enhedslisten with some measures against social dumping, but you could not rule out the possibility of the government's downfall. Especially some of the Social Liberal ministers are strongly opposed to measures that would restrict the rights of EU citizens and/or renege on the Danish obligation to follow international law.

The most recent polling average composed by Berlingske on 2 March (2011 election)

Social Democrats 19.5 % (-5.3 %) 34 seats (-10)
Social Liberals 9.4 % (-0.1%) 17 (0)
Conservatives 4.5 % (-0.4%) 8 (=)
SF 3.8 % (-5.4%) 7 (-9)
Liberal Alliance 5.3 % (+0.3%) 9 (=)
Christian Democrats 0.4 % (-0.4%) 0 (=)
DF 19.2 % (+6.9 %) 34 (+12)
Liberals 27.0 % (+0.3%) 47 (=)
Enhedslisten 10.9 % (+4.2%) 19 (+7)

Left wing 43.6 % (-6.6%) 77 (-12)
Right wing 56.4 % (+6.7 %) 98 (+12)

DF have increased further and are now neck and neck with the Social Democrats after the Goldman Sachs case and the current discussions about EU citizens and child benefits.

The Liberals are internally divided in the question about child benefits, and several MEPs, MEP candidates and MPs have been critical about the negative rhetoric used by the frontbenchers. Recent mail leaks also showed that at least one MP said that she would not vote for the Conservative proposal which claims that the Danish law on this issue should be superior to EU law. Perhaps that's why the Liberal leader wrote the PM and urged her to find a common solution together with the Liberals, and suggested that the Liberals would probably not support the Conservative proposal after all. A letter which infuriated the leaders of the three other right-wing parties which had apparently not even been informed.
Now both Enhedslisten and the Liberals have showed a willigness to negotiate with the government, so now it remains to see which of them it chooses. (At least some part of) the Social Democrats might prefer a deal with Enhedslisten which includes measures against social dumping, while the Social Liberals could very well find some of these measures too bureaucratic and anti-business and opt for a perhaps easier agreement with the divided Liberals.

Calling the Social Liberals left wing is highly inaccurate. The socioeconomic scale is after all still the important one. The genuine left wing is at 14,7% if you add 19,5% SDs that 34,2% left of centre (and thats only if you ignore Bjarne Corydons descrption of SD as a "centre party"). Less than SD polled alone back in 1990. So bad news for the left indeed.

Right wing, which I've seen you use as well, is then of course equally wrong with DF's economic polices, which are clearly more left-wing than the government, in mind. Red and blue bloc will give the same problems, and even writing just Thorning and Løkke would not be completely accurate as you couldn't 100 % count out that 1 or 2 of the parties chould change affiliation. Let's just assume that people understand that it doesn't mean that the Social Liberals are socialists economically.

Icelands centre-right government is in big trouble after Foreign Minister Gunnar Bragi Sveinsson announced that Iceland will withdraw its EU application on February 21. While 2/3 of Icelanders still don't want to join the EU, they do want to vote about the result of their country's long negotiations with Brussels. Both government parties promised a referendum in their election campaign and their decision to ditch that promise has resulted in a major electoral backlash. In a recent Capacent polling IP is at 19% and PP at 13%. Miles away from their huge electoral victory last year. On Saturday 7000 demonstrated against the government on Austarvöllur square in central Reykjavik, the biggest demonstration since the financial crash, and 20% of all Icelandic voters have signed a petition demanding a referendum.
While the government has refused to back down several MPs from the government parties have talked about ending the whole thing with simply putting the negotiations on hold until a new pro-EU majority might want to resume them.

This could potentially be a game changer for Icelands local election on May 31th that otherwise looked quite favorably for IP.

To understand why Icelanders are so mad about this the country's recent history of politicians lying and manipulating during the crash is the main reason.

Iceland government just seems to be an hot potato, burning everyone in it.

What happened to the much-discussed exemple of the Icelandic 'Revolution'? The new constitution has never been adopted right?

No it hasn't. The failure of passing and implementing it was one of the reasons the former centre-left government lost so badly.

Regarding the rest of your question see this thread: https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=171532.0 (https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=171532.0)

True, but the present government has been extremely clumsy handling this.

First Sveinsson ignored the agreement between the parties that the long awaited EU report from the Economic Institute at the University of Iceland should be distributed to all MPs at the same time and gave it to the government MPs first. Then he leaked the content to the two government loyal media Eyjan and Morgunbladid (Icelands largest paper). They then trumpeted the governmet line that the report showed that it would be impossible for Iceland to get any exceptions on farming and fishing and the application process was therefore not worth pursuing any further.
Three days later Sveinsson then withdrew the EU application while accusing the MPs voting for the application back in 2009 for voting against their conscience (which is, believe it or not, unconstitutional in Iceland) and the former Left Green Minister of Finance for lying.

After carefully orchestrating a one sided media presentation Sveinsson then accused the media of one sided anti-government coverage and lack of a serious debate of the report. He then refused to talk to Icelands national broadcaster RUV anymore because they were being mean to him (by asking critical questions and such).

Both government parties then came with rather strange explanations of why exactly their electoral promise of a referendum should not be taken seriously. PP claimed that their unconditional guarantee of a referendum was "only valid if they had entered into a coalition with a pro-EU party" and the IP leader stated that "the promise lost validity after the election since the Indepence Party is against the EU" So "yeah, we made a promise, but it isn't valid anymore because we didn't mean it!".

Around 80% of the Icelandic voters want a referendum, but the fractions in control of both PP and IP at the moment are based on the 20% mainly rural voters who are paranoid that naysayers in Reykjavik will vote yes in a referendum for some unknown reason (because, ya know, townies are weird).

Especially IP is in trouble over this because they have a strong pro-EU wing including the Chamber of Commerce and the employers association. IP leader Bjarni Benediksson was also (at least unofficially) pro-EU and the Euro before he took over the leadership in 2009. But he is a very weak position and doesn't dare to take on the right wing centered around ex Prime Minister and present Morgunbladid editor David Oddsson (one of the main culprits of the financial crash). Also since PP will have difficulty budging on this  issue it could break the coalition if he insists. So this weird crisis where the government wont hold a referendum they could easily win and the voters demand a referendum in order to say no to the question will likely be difficult to resolve.

Government proposes tougher controls with EU citizens' use of welfare benefits

The government today proposed five measures to control EU citizens' access to welfare benefits further. The PM also stated that Denmark would support Finland in an upcoming case at the EU court where the European Commission accuses Finland of breaching EU law by forcing EU nationals to accrue the right to welfare benefits by working in Finland. The proposals come after weeks of discussions about child benefits for EU nationals which have seen DF siphon off even more voters from the other parties, especially the Social Democrats and the Liberals. Today the discussions between the parties on bringing the Danish law on child benefits in accordance with EU law continue.

The five proposals are as follows:
Quicker and better controls of whether EU nationals on welfare benefits are in fact workers/seeking work.
Establish a unit to control whether recipients of cash benefits in Denmark might have values in other EU countries that make them ineligible for cash benefits.
Persons on cash benefits with a short time of employment in Denmark and poor Danish skills must take Danish courses and attend more interviews at the job centres.
Persons on unemployment benefits with a short time of employment in Denmark and poor Danish skills must take Danish courses and attend more interviews at the job centres.
The unemployment funds should more systematically control whether EU nationals on unemployment benefits are in fact living in Denmark.

NATO's next Secretary General may be another Scandinavian, at least if we are to believe the Norwegian media. Apparently, Labour Party leader Jens Stoltenberg is the favorite to succeed Fogh Rasmussen, who is stepping down this year.
Obama is said to have recommended him for the post, according to the reports.

Nothing have been decided yet of course, but Stoltenberg is clearly interested in the position. If he does get this job, the Labour party will have to choose a new leader. The overwhelming favorite is Jonas Gahr Støre (54), who has served as both Minister of Foreign Affairs and Minister of Health in the Stoltenberg II cabinet. Støre's background is somewhat unusual for a party leader: He is considered to be part of the Labour Party "right", like Stoltenberg, only joined the Labour Party in his mid 30's, and comes from a wealthy upper class family. Despite, this he apparently has strong support amongst all factions in the Labour Party, and no realistic challengers exist.

JGS was mentioned as a serious contender for the NATO job last time around. So its ironic if he gets to be party chairman because Stoltenberg is chosen as GS this time.

Stoltenberg would be an excellent NATO GS. I hope he gets it.

Indeed. I think I have read somewhere that Støre was a supporter (maybe even a member) of Høyre when he was a young man. Støre is a great choice for AP. They will need him to attract the educated and urban middle class that is crucial to their electoral fortunes in 2017.
I was happy to see Stoltenberg leave as prime minister, but I think he could do a great job as NATOs Secretary General. He is obviously a very able man. Not to mention how Norway probably is one of the most enthusiastic and pro-American of the NATO-countries (Norwegian fighter aircrafts delivered about 25 % of the bombs dropped over Libya during the intervention there).

Yes, that's true about Støre. There was a story about his background in Høyre a few years back. http://www.dagbladet.no/nyheter/2008/09/17/547220.html (http://www.dagbladet.no/nyheter/2008/09/17/547220.html)

He doesn't seem to ever have been an active member of the party (guess it would have said if he was), but he did have talks with Kåre Willoch about working for him in 1987. In the end, Støre was offered the job but did not take it (for whatever reasons - Støre in 2008 said it was because he, deep down, felt he did not belong in Høyre, but that could well be spin of course).

 

I don’t think it would hurt him that much, even if he had been an active member of the party. A lot of people voted for Høyre during the 1980s. There is a precedent here as well. Høyres great chief during the 1960s was John Lyng. He was a member of the communist organization “Mot Dag” during the 1920s.

It looks like Stoltenberg will be appointed as the next General-Secretary of NATO.

http://www.nrk.no/norge/_-stoltenberg-new-chief-of-nato-1.11624901

That obviously clears the way for Jonas Gahr Støre as the next leader of the Labor party, and probably the position of prime minister after 2017.

In Finland the Left Alliance has announced that it will leave the government over disagreements on the new budget. Now only five parties are left in the government which still has a majority in parliament.
The Left Alliance could not accept lower child benefits and an index freeze of student grants and pensions.
Their leader and the Minister of Culture, Paavo Arhinmäki, has said that if these things are removed from the budget or if the party is allowed to vote against the budget, then it could stay in the government, but that doesn't look realistic.
The next Finnish election will be, at the latest, in April 2015

Never got why they even wanted/needed to join. I suppose it was the SDs not wanting to be Swamped by the right (they've still got the Green League, mind)

Because the best way to change things is from within the goverment?

The next big question for the government is the Fennovoima's nuclear plant. They changed the builder to Russian Rossatom and the greens think that the change is so major that they want to have a completely new processing on the issue and to vote for it in the parliament - and so exit the government.

The Icelandic government has launched its grand plan for relieving household debt from the nations troubled home owners by offering discounts for inflation indexed loans. The plan reduces household debt for a total of 80 billion Icelandic kronor and a single household can get a maximum of 4 million kronor/20% reduction.

The promise to reduce household debt was the big selling point for the ruling Progress Party during the election campaign and its leader Prime Minister Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson said at the press conference where he launched the plan that one of the biggest campaign promises an Icelandic politician has ever given "was now fullfilled".

Still, this is a far cry from the 300 billion reduction paid for by foreign creditors he talked about during the election campaign.

Now its 80 billion from a raised banking tax (with no restrictions on how much of it can be passed on to customers) + 70 billion in tax discounts for people saving to buy their own home or reducing their mortgages, which could potentially include up to 100.000 households (as in virtually everybody in a country with 325.000 inhabitants..).

The tax discounts also include non-home owners who start saving for a flat or house to make it easier for young Icelanders to enter the housing market.
 
Still, the government's plan has been criticised by the usual negative types for not including low income groups like pensioners, students and people in council estates + ignoring the added risk of increased inflation and that the money could have been better spent investing in growth and job creation. But haters gonna hate. I am sure this will be a big success.

Former Greenlandic PM Kuupik Kleist has stepped down as leader of the main opposition party the left wing and nationalist IA on his 56th birthsday claiming he is getting too old to be party chairman. This probably leaves the door open for current MP in the Folketing Sara Olsvig (35) or interim chairman Aqqaluaq B. Egede (33) to challenge Aleqa Hammond at the next election.
This clearly increases the governments chance of survival considerably. Its a bit unclear why Kleist steps down now given that the government is down to a 1 seat majority in the Inatsisartut and a premature election is far from unlikely.

EDIT: Kleist has been uninspired as opposition leader so its no great surpise that he quits, its just the timing thats a bit odd.

It seems he wants to finish as a well paid "consultant" using his political connections to make some dough. Of course he calls it being an entrepreneur in the private sector, but the consultant firm he has started with two other old comrades seems to indicate otherwise.

A lot of praise to Kleist in the press from political opponents, which is unusual. But he was clearly the most talented PM Greenland has had.

56 is too old? Those crazy Nordics...

ftfy

For some reason I thought it was Iceland.

The Finnish Prime Minister Jyrki Katainen has announced that he will resign in June where the Coalition Party will elect a new leader and PM. He says that he is interested European or other international positions, so perhaps European Commissioner.

http://www.kokoomus.fi/en/uncategorized-en/katainen-will-not-seek-new-term-as-party-leader-successor-to-become-new-prime-minister-in-summer/

Icelandic voters are mostly negative when asked about whether the governments household debt plan will be beneficial or not according to a poll from MMR.
 
44,5 % thinks the plan will have a positive effect on the economy, 34,7 % that it will be negative and 20,8 % that it will have no effect at all.
PP voters are most enthusiastic with 70,3 % saying it will have a positive effect. IP second with 66,8 %.

Not surprisingly the opposition voters are critical.

Left Greens: 9,2 % positive/ 75 % negative
SDA: 12,9 % positive.
Pirates 13,5 % positive.
Bright Future 19,7 % positive.
 
Male pensioners and rural men are the most positive. Middle aged women from Reykjavik are the most negative.

This is not disastrous for the government as the plan is obviously a big disappointment compared to what was promised. But its worth remembering that the government is polling around 37-38% at the moment, so doing well among government voters isn't going to win elections. Basically the disappointed swing voters have already left.

Latest poll from Capacent Gallup
 
IP 24,4 percent
PP 13,4 percent (lowest in  a Gallup poll in 1,5 years)
Bright Future 17,5 procent
SDA 16,7 percent
Left Greens 12,2 percent
Pirates 9,2 percent
 
Only 37 percent of voters support the government. Down from 42% in the last poll.

At the latest of the ongoing protest meetings on Austurvöllur against the governments decision to suspend the EU negotiations without holding a referendum publicist Benedikt Jóhannesson from IPs inner circle (and related to party chairman Bjarni Benediktsson) announced his intent to start a new pro-European Conservative party. This could potentially steal voters from not just IP, but also Bright Future and SDA right wingers. Having no pro-EU party on the right side has been a clear advantage for the Icelandic centre-left. A poll showed that 40% of Icelandic voters would "consider voting for such a party" (Icelandic politics is surely weird these days), but I doubt he can get more than 10% if he gets this thing going, still that may be enough.

Sara Olsvig is running for chairman of IA
Here is the announcement from her facebook page - in Greenlandic, Danish and English :-)

Sukumiisumik isumaliutigereerlugu ippassaq immikkoortortaqarfitsinnut qinigaatitatsinnullu nalunaarpunga Inuit Ataqatigiit siulittaasussaattut qinersinissamut sassarniarlunga pissanganaq!

Efter grundige overvejelser meddelte jeg i går vores lokalforeninger og folkevalgte, at jeg stiller op til formandsposten i Inuit Ataqatigiit spændende!

After having thought of this thoroughly I yesterday informed the local branches of our party, that I am running as party leader - exciting!

If the yes-side wins the independence referendum Scotland will apply for membership of the Nordic Council according to an interview with SNP foreign policy spokesman Angus Robertson on NRK.

lol

haha what

Why though? Did Salmond watch a few episodes of Borgen and just think that it seems like such a lovely place?

I could see observer status such as that held by the Baltic states, but anything more than maybe associate status for Orkney and Shetland would seem ludicrous.

Scotland is part of the North Atlantic region and the Nordic model is also seen as attractive to many Scots. Such as the people in http://www.nordichorizons.org (http://www.nordichorizons.org) and http://reidfoundation.org/common-weal (http://reidfoundation.org/common-weal/).

Its an idea that's been floating around for at least a couple of years.

http://nationalcollective.com/2013/06/10/exclusive-icelandic-prime-minister-ready-to-welcome-an-independent-scotland (http://nationalcollective.com/2013/06/10/exclusive-icelandic-prime-minister-ready-to-welcome-an-independent-scotland)

http://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/viewpoint/as-others-see-us-the-view-from-denmark.2012059452 (http://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/viewpoint/as-others-see-us-the-view-from-denmark.2012059452)

It's an eastern movement of the 'Arc of Prosperity' delusion.

While I personally would be against more than observer status to Scotland because full membership would kill the linguistic dimension in the Nordic cooperation, there is an emotional foundation for this. Most Danes and Norwegians visiting or living in Scotland feels a sense of commonality - somehow Scotland feels close to us (and its not just rain, mountains and binge drinking ;) ) and its my impression a lot of Scots feel the same way about Scandinavia.

Regarding Norwegians and Scots Norwegian author of Øyene i Vest (The Islands in the West) Kirsti Jareg put it this way: "There is a great commonality of character to the two peoples. A peculiar duality of vulnerability and robustness that each of them recognises in the other."

With a few days left before May 1. only 27% of Danish voters consider SD to be "a labour party",  43% disagree, while 30% are undecided. Just 46% of SD voters agree that it is a labour party.

36% consider Helle Thorning-Schmidt to be bourgeois (borgerlig) and only 29% view her as a Social Democrat, 30% answers neither and 5% don't know.

Meanwhile the DPP is polling at a record 22% and SD no. 2 Mette Frederiksen speaks as if she was already the new chairman. Still SD is above 20% for the first time since January, so congrats Helle...

A new right wing party has been started in Iceland by free church congregations and anti-homosexual/transgender activists. Its based on Christian values in the US Christian Right tradition. Generally the far right hasn't been very successful in Iceland, with the Right Greens flopping at the latest election with their blend of anti-immigration, low taxes and faux environmentalism, so it will be interesting to see if this works for them.

Kristin stjórnmálasamtök wants to ban gay marriage, get rid of the gender neutral marriage ritual and only allow abortions if the mothers health is in danger, forbid the use of surrogate moters + cut state funding for sex change operations and stop non-Christian immigration to Iceland.

On foreign policy they want to cut ties to the EU (which they see as a treat to Icelands independence) and China while strengthening Icelands relations to the US and try to join NAFTA. They want to change the constitution in order to ban the Althing from giving away Icelandic sovereignty or if that's not possible require 80% acceptance in a referendum for giving up sovereignty.

Several church leaders including a handful of prominent free church ministers have denounced the new party, calling it right wing extremist and intolerant.

Government voted down but no resignation

()

Today was the final vote on the proposed resolution on child benefits. The resolution, proposed by DF, the Conservatives and the Liberal Alliance, says that the administration of the child benefits law should happen according to the Danish law from 2010. The law states that EU citizens must earn up the right to child benefits; i.e. they can't get the full amount of child benefits before they've worked here for two years. A year ago the government stopped administrating according to this law as they had been warned by the European Commission and later their own judicial service that this was not legal according to EU law. Therefore all EU citizens can get the full child benefits if they work at least nine hours a week.
There has been some doubt as to how the Liberals would vote as the party has been internally divided. In the end they voted for the resolution, expect for one rebel who, unlike the other liberal rebels, refused to be cleared from voting. This meant that there was a majority for the proposal with the three proposers, Enhedslisten and the Liberals voting for the resolution. The government and SF voted against the proposal.
In practice, the resolution will mean nothing; the government can keep administrating according to the EU rules. They argue that in order for the administration to be changes, the actual child benefits law should be changed and include a passage which states that the law is approved with the knowledge that it is breaching EU rules. This should ensure that the ministers can not be charged for acting against the law, which is this case is the EU law which ranks above Danish laws. Such a law change has not yet been proposed.

However, Enhedslisten has refused to support a no confidence motion against the government despite calls for just that by many members of the right-wing parties, especially DF. So in the end, this case will result in nothing more than a further EU-scepticism and more success for DF in the European elections.

At their party conference the Red Green Alliance in Denmark agreed on a new party program to replace the very long and very Marxist one they had, which has made it difficult to connect to new voter groups unfamiliar with left wing tradition and Marxist terminology.

The Red Greens have grown from 2.300 members to 10.000 since the last party program was agreed upon and many of the new members are also unfamiliar with Marxist terminology, so even internally this makes sense.

The old program mentioned revolution 29 times, the new one only once and in a context where its clear that they want to do it by democratic methods.

Also they are going from wanting communal ownership of all means of production to only wanting "fundamental changes to the economic structure".

A controversial paragraph about abolishing the police and replacing it with workers militias (in a hypothetical revolutionary situation) is also gone and they even back the military, all though only to be used in UN peace keeping operations.

So all in all. Moderate heroes! As a Trotskyist stated: The new programme tries to bridge from the left wing to the Liberals.

Party leadership has also been met with criticism for trying to weed out far left and controversial candidates for the next election.

Among them is Muslim convert Anna Rytter.

Former minister of foreign affairs Jonas Gahr Støre has been elected as the new leader of the Norwegian Labour party. That means that Gahr Støre will be Labour’s candidate for Prime Minister in 2017.

Gahr Støre is considered to belong to the moderate-conservative faction of Labour, and there are few political differences between him and former leader Jens Stoltenberg.

Good for them, I'll say. The real question is not what's in a party's programme from any congress, but how they implement it and what political choices they make. Getting rid of archaic marxist terminology has always been on my personal book.

The Red Green Alliance seem to now be fully fledged Democratic Socialists rather than Lenninists.

That's not a quote. Why did you make it as one?

mistake! corrected.

The old programme was also pro-democracy - if you bothered to read it properly (which nobody did). But it was a hotchpotch of strange and internally contradicting relics from the past with some weird hypothetical scenarios in which a future elected socialist government had to defend itself against reactionary counter revolutionaries by arming the workers - and the party leadership had to defend it time and again.

DF biggest party in a national poll for the first time ever. In a poll by YouGov for MetroExpress, DF is the biggest party. This is not very surprising days after they won the EP elections clearly and with the Liberals tormented by the expenses scandals of their leader, but nevertheless quite significant. No suprise that it's a YouGov poll either; they have consistenly been showing the highest DF results.

DF 23.9% 42 seats
Liberals 21.3% 38
Social Democrats 17.6% 31
Enhedslisten/Unity List 11.9% 21
Social Liberals 8.7% 15
Liberal Alliance 6.7% 12
SF 4.8% 9
Conservatives 4.2% 7
Christian Democrats 0.9% 0

Government + supporting parties = 76 seats
Opposition = 99 seats

With other polls showing the Social Democrats back ahead, would Helle risk a snap election at all?

No. This poll has Liberals + DF on 55,2% - and it might be right. An election now would be extremely risky.

Well, it would probably be seen as a bit too opportunist if she called an election right now when it's not completely clear what will happen leaderwise in the Liberals. Soon it will be summer holidays; normally not a time for general elections. So then an election will not be before September when much of the current Liberal problems could be over. I haven't seen a poll yet which shows a lead for the left-wing parties combined this time. There was one after the last expenses scandal, but after a few weeks it was pretty much back to normal with big leads for the opposition. The same will not neccessarily happen this time, but the government can't be sure that such cases will in the end decide how people vote at a general election.

Generally, I believe that she will still try to wait as a long as possible. The government's (only?) hope is that the economy improves so much that their voters will return as their reforms will be viewed in a more positive light. Although the economy has been improving during the last year or so, they will probably hope that the situation will be even better in a year's time.

With a result like this, could Thulesen Dahl become Prime Minister, or is DF still controversial enough that Venstre would refuse to enter a coalition with them?

No. Allowing DF to lead a government would give them a chance to become the biggest party for a long time. Thulesen-Dahl is a capable and intelligent guy and might very well be succesful and the Prime Ministers party generally gains from its coalition partners. That would be very problematic for the Liberals.

And the Liberals and DF could never agree on an EU policy.

Regarding whether DF would be too controversial I think the Liberal leadership has crossed the Rubicon on that one some time ago (saying things like they have "a community of values" with DF etc.), but they would lose some of their more principled actual liberal members to Radikale Venstre or Liberal Alliance if they formed a government with DF.

As politicus says the big problem is DPP's EU policy, while DPP are not against EU (as they don't support Denmark leaving it), they're to critical and populist on the issue to gain support from a majority in parliament.

I like the fact that conservative Christians have no place in Danish politics. :P

Somewhat true, since the Christian Democrats are not represented and the Conservatives are very secular.

All though there are two representatives of the right wing Lutheran Tidehverv movement in the DPP group and one of them - Christian Langballe - is a Minister.

I think that it something most of the Scandinavian countries have in common. The Christian Democrats appeared in places like Italy and Germany because the traditional rightwing bourgeois parties had compromised by supporting fascists or Nazis, or simply by being associated with them. The same dynamics weren’t in place in Norway, Sweden or Denmark.

Christian Democrats do not necessarily equal Christian Conservatives - especially in Scandinavia  and if you do actually make that equation DK, Norway, Sweden do have conservative Christian parties.

The German catholic party Zentrum, which was the main ancestor of CDU, dates back to the German Empire. CDU became bigger because of bourgeois parties incriminating themselves by collaborating with the Nazis, but Christian Democrats would have existed as a strong party anyway.

As mentioned earlier Christian conservatives do have a place in Danish politics, as an important segment in the DPP - as seen in the partys growing homophobia and opposition to gay marriage.

I agree. Christian Democrats are not necessarily Christian conservatives.  They can easily belong to other parties as well. You mentioned that DPP caters to a lot of the conservative Christian voters in Denmark. That is to some extent the case in Norway as well. People who place a great deal of emphasis on abortion and gay marriage usually vote for FrP or KrF.

But my point is that Scandinavia is distinct by the fact that Christian democratic parties are either marginal (as in Norway and Sweden), or gone altogether (as in Denmark). I seem to remember that there was a Christian Democratic party in parliament in Denmark, but that they disappeared during the late 1990s?

The problem with transfering he whole Christian democratic Party to Denmark and comparing the different Christian movement in DPP and CD (Christian Democrats)/CPP (Christian People Party) are several.

Traditional the fundamentalist and low church elements in Danish Lutheranism have connected with liberal and socialist parties.

As for CPP have only reached out to a relative small and specifict segment in the Danish Lutheran movement; the crypto calvinist "Indre Mission" (Internal Mission) who make up around 6-10 percent of the Danish population, and among this movement only a minority have supported CPP, most have traditional voted Venstre, but some found Venstre too right and anti-solidaric, but was not willing to vote on the "Godless" Social democrats. Historical these people voted for for the Social Liberals, but when pornography and abortion was made legal in the late 60ties, these people became aware, that the Social Liberals no longer represented their interest, and CPP was established. This are a quite different history from Christian Democrats outside Scandinavia.

The religious aspects in DPP have very little in common with this. First of all the priests in DPP belong to Tidehverv a very small and elitary ecclessial fraction in Danish Lutheranism, which build individualism, nationalist and the thoughts of Kierkegaard. Before their connection with DPP, Tidehverv was traditional split between a pro-Social Democratic fraction and a pro-Conservative fraction, with the latter fraction in the thirties flirting with fascism. While the priest from Tidehverv have delivered much of DPP's intellectualism it have never really reached down to the common voters, which if they're religious at all are more likely to identify with the very liberal but somewhat nationalist Grundtvigianism.
So what Tidehverv have delivered to DPP are not voters, but an intellectual ballast, which the party needed.

While a few members of Inner Mission may have voted for the Social Liberals its members voted quite heavily for the old conservative party Højre (the Right) in the 19th century and after the turn of the century drifted towards the Liberals, representing their rural interests.

Inner Mission is pietistic, but I wouldn't call them crypto-Calvinist.

Anyway, the two most classical Christian Right types in the DPP parliamentary group come from Inner Mission. Its the couple Mikkel Dencker and Mette Hjermind Dencker.

As family policy spokesperson she is responsible for most of the party's anti-gay rhetoric linking gay marriage to people marrying dogs and goats, something their deputy chairman Søren Espersen called "figurative speech".

Ms. Dencker has also claimed that single parents, homosexuals, divorcees and children leaving home before they are 18 are unnatural.

As a sample on her rhetoric from November 2013:

”Do people whose life partner is of the same sex exist? Do people who live alone with their children exist? Do children who have never met their father, because they are created with insemination exist? Do children living together with multiple adults exist? The answer to all those questions is YES! It exists in todays Denmark. Is it natural? No! No matter how recognized, widespread and normal it will be, it will never be natural to live in a way that is against the order of nature”.

Espersens remark about Russian discrimination of gays as "that little gay thing" and DPP critique of Crown Prince Frederick (who is an IOC member) for criticizing Russia's discrimination of gays in connection with the Sochi Olympics is also part of the party's new anti-gay rhetoric.


On Tidehverv

I have posted on Tidehverv earlier and I think we more or less agree on this strange movement.

I would just like to add the characteristic of Tidehverv and their rhetoric from the poet, priest and national resistance icon Kaj Munk (murdered by the Germans in 1944):

"God is everything, I am nothing and you are an idiot!". That is basically how those guys still debate.

EDIT: While Tidehverv are not conservative Christians in the usual sense they do share many Christian Right positions and Tidehverv nestor Søren Krarup did say that "gay people are handicapped" during the gay marriage debate.

Generally I prefer the labels Christian Democrats and Christian Right to Christian Conservatives when debating this topic. Christian Democracy is fundamentally a form of conservatism, but many Christian Democrats have policy positions on economics and environmental issues that are to the left of conservatives because our conservatism is based on different issues.

Of the Christian parties in Scandinavia only the new and very small "The Christian Party" in Iceland is Christian Right in the US sense. The others are more or less centrists with the Danish as the most left wing and the Swedish as the most right wing.

They are also of different age:

Norway 1933, Finland 1958, Sweden 1964 and Denmark 1970.
 

Anthropologist and MP in the Folketing Sara Olsvig (35) is  the new chairman for Greenlands main opposition part IA after a narrow 37-35 victory over temporary chairman Aqqaluaq B. Egede. Olsvig now leaves the Folketing. Her election is a victory of the Nuuk based well educated segment over the settlements.

Danish Liberal leader and centre-right Prime Minister candidate Lars Løkke Rasmussen is scheduled to meet with his party's Executive Committee on Tuesday for a vote of confidence on his continued leadership after the expense scandal. But a growing number of local associations - especially in Jutland - and politicians demand his resignation. Observers think it will be difficult for Løkke to get the 70-75% support they think is necessary for him to continue as chairman with any authority and predict he will step down before the meeting - rather than face the humiliation of a defeat or a razor thin victory.

In Sweden those who didn't belong to the state Church, the evangelicals, were traditionally supporting the liberals. Once the liberals became, well, liberal, the Christian Democrats eventually arose as a response.

When were the Liberals really liberal? I mean except maybe for a few years during Bengt Westerberg's reign.  :P

It seems like the Danish liberal party Venstre has been dug down into a pretty deep hole by the expenses of the party's leader Lars Løkke Rasmussen.

In a brand new Megafon poll is Venstre down on 14,5%, less than 3/5 of the party's result at the 2011 election.
Moreover, this poll is the first one since the 2011 election, where the center-left bloc has a majority.

Full poll:

()

Edit: The leader board of Venstre plan an extraordinary meeting tomorrow. With this poll in recent memory, I don't think the meeting will be boring...

How does this poll work? A+B+F+Red-Green only gets them to 47.9%...

Well, as far as my calculation goes, ABFØ is at 50.8% and CIVO is at 47.8%. Then I guess that the 1.4%, which doesn't lead to any representation (0.8% for list K + 0.6% for others (øvrige)) has been shared equally to make the vote on the blocs total 100%.


EDIT: Ah, maybe you have used the numbers from the middle column. That is the numbers of the pollster's former poll, the new poll are the rightmost numbers

I was looking at last week's poll in the middle column! My mistake

http://www.dr.dk/Nyheder/Andre_sprog/English/2014/06/02/130923.htm

Lol at DR for translating hovedbestyrelse to central comitee!

Very interesting poll. I didn’t expect to see the Social Democrats do so well, or Venstre do so badly.

If Danish Peoples Party actually became bigger than Venstre in a real election, how would that change the dynamics on the Danish right?

I have no idea and if someone say they do, they're wrong.

DPP are between two point, the untouchable and the mainstream, last time such a party became the biggest was the SocDem in the early part of the century. So there are little precedence for how the voters and the Right will react to DPP being biggest. I doubt the Right would give DPP the PM position, on the other hand if DPP are the biggest party, it would look weird, as avoidance of responsability (from DPP side) and as an insult (from the other party in government) if they didn't became part of the government.

The one in red is from the 2011 election.

According to political editor at the Danish newspaper Politiken Mette Østergaard Liberal leader Lars Løkke Rasmussen will withdraw as chairman after tonight's meeting in the party's main board. That was to be expected, but she also says that he will support former Minister of Defence Søren Gade as chairman instead of Deputy Chairman Kristian Jensen, whom Løkke has totally sidelined and consider a nerd. Jensen is more in touch with the party's rural and Grundtvigian roots (mum and dad were free school teachers, he does gymnastics in his spare time and his wife is scouting instructor etc.) and has the support of the Liberal core areas in Mid- and Western Jutland, but goes by the name Kristian Kedelig (Boring) and is not well liked in the capital area.

Gade is Chairiman of the organization Ariculture and Foods after he had to withdraw as Minister of Defence after the Jægerbog-scandal (a former Danish special force member giving away supposedly confident info in a book) and is set to testify before an investigative commission later this year. But apparently he has assured Løkke that there will no problems in that regard.

He is a likable, empathetic guy, who is able to connect well with "ordinary people" and a much better communicator than Jensen.

Østergaard cites a source very close to Løkke and she is normally very well informed.

EDIT: Well, this time she wasn't!

Actually it may lead to a situation in which DPP is no longer to the right, but somewhere in the middle - perhaps as the main rival to the Liberals. The problem for DPP in this scenario is that they would have no allies, but that could change in the next 10-12 years with a new generation of SDs taking over.

Another interesting question is how much DPP will and can moderate on immigration policy in order to be perceived as more moderate.

In a new Epinion poll from DR they are actually the biggest party.

SD 21,4%
 

Social Liberals 7,3%



Conservatives 5,8%



SPP 7,2%



Liberal Alliance 5,4%



Christian Democrats 0,3%



DPP 23,8%



Liberals 20,1%



Red Green Alliance 8,7%

After a more than 7 hour marathon meeting in the Liberals main board Party Chairman Lars Løkke Rasmussen survived the challenge from his critics, and stays on as leader. His opponents failed to get the necessary votes to call an extraordinary congress.

This is really good news for SD and Helle Thorning-Schmidt and might give her unpopular government a chance to survive.

Wow! I was really getting the impression he was doomed.

So was virtually everybody else. But I suppose the lack of faith in Kristian Jensens leadership abilities and the manoeuvre of bringing Søren Gade in as a potential challenger to Jensen did the trick. Even if it would have been rather odd for them to have a chairman who isn't in the Folketing a competitive election between Gade and Jensen would either have meant a Gade victory or Jensen winning with such a slim margin that his position would have been untenable from day one. Apparently Jensen and most of his supporters didn't want to risk that.

Still, some things have been said that cant be withdrawn.  The Liberals in Viborg in central Jutland made a statement saying that Løkke Rasmussen was "not the sort of man you would want to invite into your house", and I can see the SD campaign people making posters with "Would you invite this man into your house?" with a picture of Christiansborg Castle, as it is the house of parliament.

Wasn't "Liberal leader Lars gets in trouble after extravagant lifestyle scandals" also in Borgen? Danish politicians really are rip-offs.

Lars Løkke Rasmussen have been an important player in Danish politics for decades and he has always been sleazy (as 17 year old leader of Venstre's youth, he cheapted a band out of 30 000 Dkr/4000-5000$, based on him being to young to sign the contract). As County Major he was well known for his willingness to use tax money on himself and his drinking friends. So it's more likely that Borgen's character are the rip-off.

As for his success in staying, I think no one expected him to say "that's a nice party you have there... it would be a shame if something happened to it".

It seems as if the last 3 years of Danish politics have more or less been ripped directly out of Borgen.

Truly we live in a postmodern world.

Yeah, Mr. Hesselboe was perhaps the most obvious parallell to our timeline. Still, considering everything else that has happened since 2011, it fits very well into the narrative of the Borgen writers looking into the future, taking a couple of headlines and mixing them around.

No, it was misuse of corporate credit card to calm down his agitated wife.

Yeah, so I guess it was technically his wife's extravagant lifestyle that caused the trouble, but let's not try too hard to make Danish politics different from Borgen, okay? :p

It might not be such a big transition after all.

I have heard that the DPP isn't that far to the right in terms of economic and social policy. In the respect that they support the Danish welfare state, and accepts the need for high tax rates to fund these social programs (Their sister party in Norway is far more ambivalent on this point. They want the welfare state, but not the tax rates that are needed to pay for it). On these issues they should be able to find a lot of common ground with the Social Democrats.

The DPP obviously differs from other parties (maybe especially on the left) on immigration policy. But is this all that controversial today? The impression from Norway is that DPP and Fogh Rasmussen largely won these battles in the early 2000s.

Well, I tried to at least partially answer this above: https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=150978.msg4184279#msg4184279 (https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=150978.msg4184279#msg4184279)

DPP is basically centrists on economics, but they are right wingers on immigration, law and order, education and culture and euro-sceptics. The party is also anti-green and they have a Christian Right type spokesperson on family policies.

Regarding cooperation with SD:

DPP is increasingly seen as a partner for the left on welfare issues and social policies, and on law and order the difference to SD isn't that great

It is not possible to tighten immigration policies in DK without breaking international conventions, which no other party than DPP is willing to. The only area that can be tightened is access to citizenship. In reality DPP leadership has accepted this, but the party faithfull obviously wants more and since immigration is the raison de etre for DPP they have to keep pushing for more. Since SD has accepted the core of the centre-rights immigration policy the de facto immigration policy is not what blocks a cooperation with SD. But DPPs rhetoric and official policy on immigration and their lack of focus on integration of minorities already in Denmark is a problem for SD,

As mentioned earlier the general view in DK is that it will take a new SD leader generation (= at least 10-12 years) before DPP and SD will be able to cooperate. And DPP will have to moderate on non-economic issues, perhaps with the exception of law and order. They would also basically have to accept status quo on immigration as government policy and tone down their rhetoric (which they have already done -  but they may need to tone it down even more).

DPP could probably fairly easily moderate on environmental issues, but the rest might be harder.

First Danish poll (from Gallup) after Lars Løkkes survival is quite good for the Liberals - all things considered. Its a Liberal-SD tie with DPP not far behind, but it looks like their Euro-wave might be declining.

The government and left wing is at 46,1% combined, while the centre-right is at 52,6% (or 53,3% if you include the Christian Democrats).

Its the first poll in a very long time where SF/SPP is above the Red-Greens. Actually SF is now only 1,1% below the election result. If SF survives the "getting into government and out again"-experience without losing voters this will be a major triumph for new SF-leader Pia Olsen Dyhr.

Conservatives and Liberal Alliance have been unable to profit from the Liberal crisis, which shows just how far the Conservatives are from their previous status as one of the two big centre-right parties. Since there is virtually no ideological difference between Cons and Libs these days, it should have been possible for them to capture at least 2-3 percentage points of critical Liberal voters.


SD: 22,4%

Social Liberals: 8,7%

Conservatives: 5,5%

SPP: 7,9%

Liberal Alliance 4,3%

Christian Democrats 0,7%

DPP: 20,9%

Liberals : 21,9%

Red-Greens: 7,1%

Where would you place Liberal Alliance? Isn't this the most right-wing party economically, despite having (some of) its "roots" in Radikale Venstre? Are LA interested in joining a centre-right govt after the next election?

LA is clearly the most economically right wing party. They don't want to join a government, since they prefer to influence it from the outside and stay ideologically pure.

A Liberal one party government is what everybody expects. Since the Liberals don't want DPP as partners (and DPP don't want to join, thinking they get more influence outside - citing the SF-experience). And Løkke has stated that he sees no point in including any of the small parties.

Is he a native Finnish or Swedish speaker? Wikipedia seemed a bit unclear on the subject. 

New MMR poll has the Icelandic Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugssons Progress Party at a mere 9,5%, the lowest since april 2009.
Bright Future is getting closer to the lead with 21,8%, clearly ahead of SDA with 16,5%.

Government: 34,5%

IP 25%
PP 9,5%


Opposition: 58%

BF 21,8%
SDA 16,5%
LG 11,4%
Pirates 8,3%

So, since all sources seem to point towards the dear Gucci Helle as next in line for Van Rompuy's cushy EU job, who is likely to replace her as Prime Minister in Denmark? I don't really know who's up and coming in the Social Democratic party on your side of Öresund.

Mette Frederiksen (36) our minister of employment, she have a lot of thing going for her, she have had the sh**ttiest ministery, she have had to implement the most unpopular policies of this government. All her dirty laundry are more or less in the open, she has apoligised for her hypocrisy in sending her children in private school, while she was against private schools a decade ago (her apoligy).

...and people still love her, in fact she's more popular than ever.

And of course she look like this.

()

So no one will call her something like Gucci Helle.

And she have made the right alliance in the part, so I doubt there will be a serious candidate going against her, when the party elect her.

My own opinion of her are that she's intelligent, competent and unlikely to have any skeleton in the closet. Also she has a broad appeal to the different segments who tradional vote Social Democratic. Her electoral district is Ballerup; a working class suburb to Copenhagen.  

Is it me or heads of state/goverment in Europe are getting younger and younger? We would have three 30-something and they are quite a few in their 40s...

No it's not you, I personal think it's a natural effect of politician entering politic younger and younger. Of course here's it's something of a accident, the "crown princes" of the Social Democrats was Nick Hækkerup and Nicolai Wammen, who are both in their forties. But because MF have been so successful as a minister and those two less so, she have jumped ahead of them.

A 36-year-old prime minister would be pretty damn impressive. Would probably be the youngest Head of Government of a democratic country?

Her quotes about private schools does make her a massive hypocrite though. It's stuff like that which leads to contempt for politicians. She seems to want one set of rule for herself and another set for everyone else.

Yes

Of course she made them in her early twenties, and when she send (first of) her children in private school, she did so after the child have gone to a public school (and from what I been told about the school from people living in the district, I understand her), and she openly told it and didn't attempt to hide it.

The new Estonian prime minister is even younger. The three newest heads of government in the EU are Renzi (Italy, 39yo), Taavi Roivas (Estonia, 34yo) and Stubb (Finland, 46yo).

We'll probably have to wait the autumn to know whether Helle gets the job at the EU though.

She's apperently the prefered candidate of Merkel, Renzi, and Cameron. (selfie-buddies)
It wouldn't surprise me if it isn't made official until the autumn, but it's pretty clear that she will get a new ridiculously high salary to buy all the fashionables she has ever dream of, and Denmark will get a new likable Prime Minister.  

If HTS was after a high paycheck she would not be PM of Denmark. She's in it for the power, as such I have no doubt that she will take the job as President of the European Council, if it's offered to her. But to suggest it's over money is both ignorant and silly. 

Why would Cameron want HTS?

Are you trying to channel Frank Underwood?

I'm pretty sure she won't mind either the power or having a salary higher than Obama. Mostly of course she will take the job because staying on as PM would (most likely) lead to her being thrown out next-year, and quitting while ahead by taking a secure guaranteed power position for five years is preferable to humiliation at the ballot box. I too would prefer being the President of the European Council to being leader of opposition in the Folketing salary or no salary.

---

I don't know. But it's pretty clear he does want her in a top EU-position.


And before Council President he was touting her as an alternative to Juncker.

No. 10 backs wife of Kinnock's son for top EU-post. (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2654669/No-10-backs-wife-Kinnocks-son-EU-post-Helle-Thorning-Schmidt-preferred-candidates-president-European-Commission.html)

 
 

Pro-British politician from a country outside the Eurozone which tradional (before the British began to behave like raving lunatics) was one of usual allies of UK in EU. Yes she's more pro-Labour than Tory, but with the choices Cameron have limited himself to in EU, she's the best he can get.

I don't channel anything, but any politician who have made it to the first row in one of the big traditional parties, could make more in the private sector or in one of the union affiliated companies (like the big pension companies).

Also anyone who have followed her career can see she's a ruthless career politicians.


Except I would say that right now, if she's not elected President of the Council, her chance to be reelected are rather high as the government. She can more or less just wait for the next scandal in Venstre. It doesn't look like there are any negative surprises in the economy, the unemplyment are falling, the economy are growth. So right now it's a waiting game, to see what skeletons are hiding in LLR's closet.
 

Oh, that part, I wouldn't question for a second.


Waiting for what exactly, voters trickling down from Venstre to DF? Because LLR's scandals so far hasn't really seemed to benefit the government much, and with Enhedslisten barking at the Social Democrats' tail it would, to use your own words, be silly and ignorant to think that President of the Council isn't a more safe job to have. Especially since HTS has barely been able to keep her dysfunctional coalition together.

I'm not saying that she couldn't possibly survive if she stayed on. There have been far greater turn-arounds for unpopular incumbant governments in recent history. But her chances would obviously be less than 50%, whereas securing this job would guarantee her five years without having to deal with bickering coalition partners, voters or digging journalists, leaving her free to tour the Union taking selfies with world leaders and getting autographs from the cast of Sex and the City.     

Former Icelandic Prime Minister Geir H. Haarde (IP), the only politician convicted after the crash, is going to be Icelands next Ambassador to the US. Yuck.

New leader of the Danish Conservatives

()

Søren Pape Poulsen, the 42-year old mayor of Viborg, is the new leader of the Danish Conservative Party. Lars Barfoed, who became leader in 2011, decided to resign after three years of stagnation or even decline. The Conservatives are still, as in 2011, hovering around the 5% mark. The local elections in 2013 and the European elections in 2014 were rather good for the party, but that didn't neccessarily help Barfoed as many interpreted the results as showing that their policies were fine and could be sold by their good local and european candidates, so what was lacking was a good "salesman" at the national level again. Some media claim that Barfoed was told to leave by a number of high-ranking Conservatives, but it is quite difficult to determine how much it was Barfoed's own choice.

Søren Pape Poulsen is not a MP currently, which is quite unprecendented. It will not last for too long though as he will run for parliament in the next election and resign as mayor. The main reason for choosing a non-MP was probably that there was no other really leader alternatives among the MPs which is mostly made up of has-beens.
He is educated within shipping at Grundfos, the world's largest pump manufacturer, and has worked a shipping agent, but has also worked in a couple of years as an uneducated teacher. He has been a member of the Council in Viborg since 2002, and became mayor after the 2009 local elections. He decided to seek an alliance with the red parties in the council so that he could become mayor despite the Conservatives only having 3 out of 31 seats. Furthermore, there actually was a right-wing majority in the Council, and the Liberals were the biggest party, so they were very angry with him. In the 2013 local elections, the Conservatives' and Søren Pape Poulsen's personal votes were doubled and he could continue as mayor; this time with support from all parties in the constitution of the council.

On his press conference today he mentioned three subjects that would be important for him. He wants to fight hard against the new school reform with longer days and compulsory "homework cafes". The main argument against it that it takes away time from the families, and makes it too difficult for kids to have a leisure time activity or a job. He repeated the well-known Conservative opposition to the top tax rate. Finally he declared himself a "typically conservative tough on crime" and especially wanted to reduce the number of break-ins. He is also known to be among the more eurosceptic parts of the party, but the repeated that he is completely behind the party's programme.

What, exactly, is the point of the Danish Conservatives these days? Lobbying group for right-wing municipal machines?

Honestly I don't think anybody know at least not on national level, through I don't think it's "Lobbying group for right-wing municipal machines", it's more lobbying for Gentofte, Lyngby and the other municipalities in the Whisky Belt. Ironic the Conservative have always been in the traditional market towns around the country, but they have more or less ignored that groups interest. Which is why I find this choice interesting, as he come from Jutish market town and he are not as most Danish party leaders a economist or lawyer, but a freight fowarder and teacher. Also the fact that he's the mayor of Viborg also make him rather different from the other party leaders.

While I'm not sure he's going to be a success, I think that based on his CV alone, he's a good choice, the question are whether that translate into him being able to get success as party leader are the big question.

Through I would say I was impressed with his speech to the press, while he didn't say anything new, or anything which would get me to vote for him. He did make the Conservative position clear and showed how it was relevant for the individual Dane something Barfoed have not succeed at after 3 year as leader of the Conservatives.

There are a interesting rumour going around about Søren Pape Poulsen, that he's gay and in fact married to another man. He was asked about by the tabloid Ekstra Bladet in a interview and his answer was that he didn't talk about his private life.

No less than three out of eight Conservative MPs are now former party chairmen, must be some kind of record. But since Pape isn't an MP at least they wont make it to 50% ex-chairmen.

Honestly I don't have the numbers, but from that I can see most of those people vote Venstre or SocDem today.

Has there ever been any kind of serious discussion about a merger between the Conservatives and Venstre, in the parties themselves?

Erik Eriksen, leader of Venstre from 1950-1965 and PM 1950-1953, proposed a merger in 1965, but he couldn't gather a majority in his own party, so he had to resign and the plan never got any further. Since then I don't believe there have been any serious discussions about a merger

In the 80s, where Conservatives was bigger than Venstre, they had large groups of public employees (types like customs officers, policemen and postal workers), small business owners and generally a majority of centre-right voters in suburbia and most towns outside of the Liberal heartland in Western and Central Jutland. Those types mainly vote Venste these days.

Venstre shred its image as a country party and conquered suburbia in the 90s and (re)established itself as the major centre-right party. Basically the Conservative window of opportunity was after the post war urbanization had left the Liberals vulnerable in the 60s and until the Liberal leadership managed to modernize the party.

The Conservatives wasted most of the 70s on a bitter internal feud between a left winger with strong business credentials Erik Haunstrup-Clemmensen and a right wing lawyer, Erik Ninn-Hansen. So the 80s was really their one shot. In the mid 70s when Erik and Erik had almost destroyed the party, Schluther took over and made them strong again. But after Schluther was forced out of office on the Tamil scandal (illegal denial of refugee status to Tamils) another civil war broke out between the "social conservative" (in the Euro sense, not the American) left wing and the true blue right wingers and the compromise candidate selected, a provincial police detective named Bemndt Bendtsen, was a flop. More flops followed and in the meanwhile the Liberals secured their position as the mainstrem centre-right party for good.

What about CD? If you want to know why they died out, it was because they more or less was a family party, who build on some issue several other parties also adopted. The party was estabnlished because in Erhard opinion SocDem had moved to far to the west, and it was really a party for "right wing" (compared to the rest of the party) social democrats, so from the movement Nyrup became PM, it was just a matter of time before the party would die out. It tried hard to build a new platform as a centre party with the right opinions (not xenophobic), but at the time that platform belonged to the social liberals and the kind of people voting for CD, suburban social democrats was the people least likely to buy into that platform as they lived as neighbours to the immigrants.

It seems that it's not a just rumour

http://www.thelocal.dk/20140813/conservative-leader-im-gay-so-what

Well, its not an issue if you are open about it, but still not a thing you can just say is irrelevant if you are leader of a party with at least some reservations aobut full equality for homosexuals.

Also, the football financing thing actually sounds a bit worse than I thought.

While it's 100% better than being in the closet, I still think it's a bigger issue than we want it to be, I personal think that Denmark are a lot more homophobic than we tell ourselves, of course that homophobia are passive instead of agressive, so it's usual not an isue, but as leader of the Conservatives, we may see some of their traditional voters selecting other parties. Through luckily for the Conservatives, these people don't really have a alternative, as LA and V are just as friendly to homosexual, and if these people don't vote DPP already, they will not vote for them.


I don't think this will end up an mayor issue, municipalities and mayors get away with these things all the time, and in the one case they didn't get away with it (Brixtofte), it was because he did something which very illegal. This is a gray area, and few voters care about such issues.

I agree that the football financing thing will likely not be a big issue (football is too popular for that..), its just that there is a bit more meat on that bone than I thought.

On the other hand it is the first time a party leader has been involved in those shenanigans and the Conservatives are branding themselves as the party for orderly, decent and moral folks, so they are more vulnerable about those tings than others.

I still think Pape could have used being gay as an advantage if he had just said it instead of the "that's a private matter" stuff, since having a gay leader makes the party appear more modern, which they desperately need.

EDIT: Pape has denied that his sexuality will have any influence on party politics. Officially the MPs are free to vote as they please on matters regarding gay rights, since its an "ethical question". He will not change that or make gay rights a priority in any way.

Its interesting that he is a devout Christian. The Conservatives skipped the "God" part of "God, King and country" in the 60s, but he has emphasized, that most people are more Christian than they think because Christianity and Christian values are so integrated in our culture.

Also, unlike his two immediate predecessors he doesn't rule out being in government wit the DPP, but states that the party is too small to be in government at the moment. This will ruffle some feathers among more class conscious conservatives, who despise the vulgar and primitive DPP.

Being the adopted son of a smallholder couple in rural central Jutland his class background is also clearly different from most conservatives.

I don't disagree, on the other hand the Conservatives brand themselves that way, it's mostly against poor people criminality not rich people criminality.


I'm sorry I'm going to say it this way.

NO JUST NO

When people think about gay politicians, they think Bondam or Ammitzbøll . That really not people you want mentioned together with your name, especially not if you're Conservative. Yes it may seem modern,but it modern in same way RV was radicool in 2005, in a kind of Bohemian Copenhagener kind of way, the Conservatives really don't want that brand, they want something which say they're old fashion, stable and hard working.

Well, they have lost a lot of wealthy, young, urban voters to Liberal Alliance, so old fashioned is hardly the way to go. They need an image that can combine classic conservative values like personal responsibility and thriftiness with being modern and open minded.

Not that Pape will necessarily help with the WYU demographic, the guy may be more of a right winger on value issues than he first appeared (and those types hate the DPP).

What is this Danish Whisky Belt you referred to ? I'm curious.

Its a nickname for the wealthy suburbs along the coast north of Copenhagen (the area between Hellerup and Rungsted/Vedbæk).

Yes through it also go inland, through it's unclear how far, I have heard some include Furesø and Allerød Municipalities in the Whisky Belt, and I can see the argument for it.
 

Social Liberal leader and vice-PM becomes new Danish EU commissioner

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While we got to keep Helle, it has just been announced that the leader of the Radikale Venstre (the Social Liberals) Margrethe Vestager will leave the government to become the new Danish commissioner. The 46-year old has been Minister of the Economy and Interior and Deputy Prime Minister since a new government was formed after the 2011 election. She has been known for her quite strict adherence to budget discipline, and has often been the main scapegoat for many leftwingers which had hoped for more leftwing economic policies. This great influence on especially economic policies has meant that she has been named the most powerful person in Denmark several times. In the last Nyrup Rasmussen regering (1998-2001) she was Minister of Education and Ecclesiastical Affairs, and she has led the Social Liberals since 2007.
The hierarchy seems pretty straight forward in the party. Morten Østergaard, the current Minister of Taxation, was recently given an unprecedented title as "stedfortrædende leder" (something like the substitute leader, i.e. leader when the leader is not there, but not just a regular deputy leader). Østergaard was also deputy leader of the party until he became minister. He is expected to take over Vestager's posts, and then perhaps a minor reshuffle will take place, maybe just for the Social Liberal ministers.
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http://www.thelocal.dk/20140831/14-detained-trying-to-prevent-faroe-island-dolphin-hunt


Of course before this start a bigger discussion about killing endangered species.

Pilot whales are not endangered. There are 800 000 of the species in the north Atlantic and beside the Faroese there are little hunt of them.

The 265 000 killed whales are ones killed since the 16th century, in average 627 pilot whales are killed annual, through in some years slightly above a thousand have been killed. Both these numbers are below their natural replacement rate.

I have no issue with hunting whales, but I have issues with Faroes being stuck in the Middle Ages.

Old traditions are not necessarily bad or cruel. Its a communal procedure with an egalitarian distribution of the meat to the community.

Its also a humane way of killing. They break the spine with a short spear which kills the dolphins instantly. You can argue about the stress from the whales being driven into shallow water, but its still a short process compared to a cow or pig going to the slaughterhouse. They only hunt flocks that are already close to the coast.

This is a media thing because the sea is "painted" red with blood and that looks dramatic on camera. Otherwise its a more humane procedure than many other forms of hunting and definitely better than the process connected with slaughtering farm animals (often transporting them for hours in crammed lorries, pigs biting and screaming etc.).

Also, if the Faroese should abolish dolphin hunting they would use more meat from industrial style agriculture.

To none-Danes: The whole HTS not getting a cushy EU job and Vestager getting one is a pretty significant thing regarding Danish politics because it basically removes any possibility of the government surviving. A leadership change to Mette Frederiksen combined with a  new more average Joe friendly agenda was their last hope and the Social Liberals losing a strong leader, who while far from beloved was at least capable of explaining the rationale behind the government reforms, also weakens it considerably.

On a related note: Denmarks biggest union 3F - which mainly organizes unskilled labourers - has decided not to back SD in the next election. Instead trying to set their own agenda. This underlines how big SDs problems with their traditional base have gotten.

The eruption of the Bárðarbunga (cool name..) volcano in Iceland has now been going on for 4 1/2 days and the lava stream will soon reach the glacial river Jökulsá á Fjöllum which will cause great explosions if it happens.

My issue is more their intense social conservatism and traditionnalism. I do not care about hunting non-endangered whales. I mean, in Canada, we have the same media circus about seal hunting.

They're a bunch of fishermen living on some isolated cold inhospitable rocks in the North Atlantic, most people who want a tertiary education have to leave the island for Copenhagen; how can you expect them to be anything other than conservative and traditional. Are you really so intolerant and myopic, that you can't live with a bunch of isolated rural people not being the most social liberal people in the world.

I'm not intolerant and myopic. I'm thinking they are neglected and not offered decent opportunities from the Danish government. They are being treated as a backward colony, no wonder they stay stuck there.

Apart from foreign policy, the justice system, currency matters and defense they have the status of an independent country. So it isn't really up to the Danish government to develop the islands. They get a state grant of about 110 mio. US dollars a year from Denmark, but are otherwise self financing.

While its more social conservative than most of mainland Scandinavia the Faeroes are not a backwards place.

They have had home rule since 1948, which mean outside the administration of the judicial branch, the military, citizenship, foreign and monetary policy, they have autonomy, they receive annual 400 million $, they're represented in the Danish parliament. So no they're not treated as a colony, they're treated as a autonome region, which they are, and if you think we should start some kind of cultural imperialist agenda to "civilise" them, well that's you're welcome to think, I just find it intolerant and myopic.

Region would be too weak a word. The Faroese are recognized as a people and  a nation (in the cultural sense) by the Danish government and are increasingly treated as a separate country more  than an autonomous part of the realm, among other things because they are outside of the EU, this was last seen when we had to boycot their fishing vessels from using Danish harbour facilities when they had the fishing conflict the the EU.

The Danish grant ("bloktilskud") to the Faroes was 633 mio. kroner in 2013, so 100 mio. $+, not  even close to 400 mio. $

But you are far from alone in assuming we give them a lot more money than we do:

http://www.knr.gl/da/nyheder/et-flertal-af-den-danske-befolkning-tror-f%C3%A6r%C3%B8erne-f%C3%A5r-flere-milliarder-i-bloktilskud-hvert-%C3%A5 (http://www.knr.gl/da/nyheder/et-flertal-af-den-danske-befolkning-tror-f%C3%A6r%C3%B8erne-f%C3%A5r-flere-milliarder-i-bloktilskud-hvert-%C3%A5)

For non-Scandinavians: The article states that a majority of Danes believe the Faroese get billions of kroner from the Danish treasury every year. 48%, like Ingemann, believe its 2 billion+ and 8% even thinks its 10 billion+ (which would be close to 2 billion $ for a population of 48.000!).

Denmark has agreed to participate in the US led "core coalition" to coordinate the fight against ISIS. The other countries asked are Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Turkey, Poland, Canada and Australian. So we are the only small country. Hercules transport planes to carry weapons to the Kurdish forces and humanitarian aid will be the main Danish contribution, but it might also include deployment of special forces later on.

Swedish pol criticized for praising David Duke: (http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/swedish-politician-slammed-supporting-video-kkk-leader-article-1.1931023)

Centre Party! I doubt than Swedish Cheese will be happy. He is a member of that party, after all. I expected SD.

Greens leave Finnish Government

First they were 6, then they were 5, and now they are 4... parties in the Finnish government as the Vihreä liitto (Green League) decided to leave the government over its decision to press forwards with the plan of building a new nuclear power plant. The government now has a very slight majority, 102 seats out of 200. One of these seats is the Speaker who does not vote. The next election will take place at the latest at 19 April 2015.

http://www.elp.com/articles/2014/09/greens-leave-finnish-government-over-nuclear-energy.html

The Green ministers were not the only ones who voted against the decision. 4 of the 6 Social Democrats voted against as well, but their party leader and Minister of Finance Antti Rinne voted for. One of the Swedish People's Party ministers voted against as well.

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Two weeks before the Liberals hold their party congress popular former Minister of Defence Søren Gade has resigned as Chairman of the interest organization Foods and Agriculture due to a dispute over the future organizational structure. When party chairman Lars Løkke was in trouble in the expense affair this summer Gade was mentioned as a possible new party chairman, but chose not to challenge Løkke. He denies any interest in returning to politics, but that hasn't stopped the media from speculating.

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A more realistic challenge to LLR would a comeback for his predecessor.

A poll shows that 44% of Liberal voters wants Lars Løkke as chairman, while only 18% prefer his rival Deputy Chairman Kristian Jensen, but no less than 62% would prefer a return of former chairman Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who resigns as NATO General Secretary on October 1, just before the Congress. With all the trouble going on in the party observers speculate if AFR will try to challenge LLR, if he wins this will basically make him a shoe-in to return as Prime Minister. The question is if AFR wants to return to Danish politics, or is looking for some lucrative international consultancy or lobbyist job. Anyway, LLR now looks a lot less secure in the chairman seat than he did in June after strongarming Jensen into not challenging him.

DR is running a story about the DPP bleeding members from their more traditional conservative wing - especially in Jutland.

Its not big names: local board members, ex-councillors and an ex- Youth League chairman, but still interesting that their conservative members seems to had enough of the party left wing turn. Normally the party is very disciplined (apart from racist cooks, who once in a while mess up things), but with old SDs and union representatives drifting to DPP and party leadership trying to appeal to dissatisfied public employees and unemployed workers things seems to have gotten a tad too red for the genuine right wingers.

Its the leaderships policies on public spending, employment benefits, being against cuts in corporate taxes and flirting with the trade unions, that they are dissatisfied with.

As one of them says: "When they are to the left of the Social Democrats on distribution policies, then its simply too much".

This is indeed a quite interesting development. Most people will probably prefer to stay in the DPP since it's a way better career opportunity than leaving, but there must be quite some discussions internally. Someone like Morten Messerschmidt, their very popular MEP with a seat in the party's executive board, has often talked about cutting the number of people on benefits, reducing the possibilities for early retirement and so on. He probably sees himself as quite similar to a right-wing Tory, whom he has just allied with in the EP. He currently seems like the heir apparent in the party, so he might hope that he can be the next party leader and turn the party somewhat rightwards in economic policies, but he can't be happy about the policies they are currently proposing.

Morten Uhrskov Jensen, who is an author and comments in the prominent newspaper Jyllands-Posten, is currently the party leader of Dansk Samling (Danish Unity). He has been quite critical of DPP and their leftish turn. He is not that much focused on economic questions, but on value questions, especially the EU. His party wants complete withdrawal from the EU, and severely criticizes DPP for not wanting the same, and argues vehemently that DPP should have removed their confidence in the previous government when it signed the Lisbon Treaty. On immigration, he also argues that the DPP is too vague, and that it is obvious that Denmark must leave all international conventions on these issues, so there can be a complete stop for immigration from "third world countries" to Denmark. If DF gets a very influential power role after the next election, then Danish Unity might get some cases, like the Lisbon Treaty one or related to the increase of refugees from Syria, where it can argue against DF's leniency towards the government it's supporting. I wouldn't rule out that they could then get a breakthrough and get 3-4 % of the votes from hardcore DPPs and current non-voters.

Danish contribution to the fight against ISIS will be 7 fighter jets (F16), 1 Hercules transport plane, about 140 guys to man them and provide support functions and 100+ military instructors to train Iraqi Kurds and the Iraqi army.  All in all 280 soldiers. They are only to operate in Iraq, not Syria. According to the Ministry  of Defence there is an agreement that the US and the Arab allies operate in Syria and the other Western countries in Iraq.

Only the Red-Green Alliance is going to vote against the contribution, which will be send off next week.

Greenlandic PM Aleqa Hammond has gone on leave while an expense scandal is being investigated. She used roughly 20.000 $ on private hotel bills, shopping and airfares which she only repaid on September 8 after media exposure. Its not big money, but Greenlanders are fed up with politicans using public money for their own good, so the public pressure is intense. Her predecessor as PM Kuupik Kleist has also used a smaller sum of public money for private purposes and has relinquished his seat in the Inatsisartut (Parliament) - he was leaving politics after the next election anyway, but a sad way to go for the best Premier Greenland has ever had IMO. The opposition demands an election, but Hammond managed to avoid that for the time being - keeping her 1 seat majority coalition intact despite strong internal criticism in the government parties.

Hammond was buhed out by 500-600 protesters  (in a town with 17.000 inhabitants), when she left the annual church service in connection with the opening of Parliament today.

pics from demo (http://sermitsiaq.ag/stort-galleri-kraever-demonstranter-valg)

The centre-right party Atassut has left the Greenlandic government, which is now a one party minority government consisting only of PM Aleqa Hammond's social democratic Siumut.

Before the party's decision to leave their Deputy Chairman Steen Lynge (who was Minister of Health) had already left the government together with two Siumut ministers: Nick Nielsen (Minister of Culture and Church) and Jens-Erik Kirkegaard (Minister of Business and Labour Market). With Atassut and the two Siumut veterans out of office Hammond's government looks increasingly shaky.

So will he government fall to a vote of confidence, or is the departing party still giving supply?

(Also I thought the Greenland governing coalition contained the Inuit Party as well. Have they already departed?)

Atassut still supports the government for the time being. It seems they will await the inquiry on Hammond's conduct. If the government falls they will likely be without any influence in the next 4 years, so they are clearly dragging their feet.

Partii Inuit left the government last autumn because of resistance to uranium mining being allowed (after a lot of internal strife).

To clarify: The two Siumut ministers who have left has done so as a protest against Hammond, not because they are involved in abuse of expense accounts themselves.

EDIT: There seems to be consensus among those in the know that Hammond will have to resign if the audit report released October 23 is as critical as the preliminary orientation from the auditers the Inatsisartut has received. If she has to go Siumut will try to elect a new PM, and will most likely be backed by Atassut, that fear an electoral defeat. But with a one seat majority for the two parties, you only need one maverick going it alone for this to fail.

Things are moving fast in Greenland.

Atassut has witdrawn their support for the government and demands an election to be called, so Hammond's government is now in minority in the Inatsisartut, even if the small Inuit Party with a single representative stays supportive.

Aleqa Hammond has stepped back as Chairman of Siumut (but not as PM) and the main board of Siumut has indicated that they are united behind Kim Kielsen (48) as acting PM while Hammond is on leave. Until an extraordinary congress can be called to elect a new chairman the party's Deputy Chairman Jørgen Wæver Johansen is in charge.

Parliament has been sent home and will according to its President not be reassembled until Tuesday, at which point an election will likely be called. But the opposition (incl. Atassut) demands an extraordinary meeting as soon as possible and they have a slim 16-15 majority.

The background for all this is that Siumut lost power in 2009 after ruling Greenland since the establishment of home rule in 1979 because the party was perceived as corrupt and nepotistic. They then regained power i 2013 on a populist anti-establishment campaign after promising to have changed their ways. Hammond's government has however been involved in several affairs in the old style (like giving her husband a juicy consultancy job, hiring a chief of her administration that had twice been fired for abuse of trusted funds and having her chief legal adviser fired and escorted out of the government building for not whitewashing an illegal hiring procedure etc. etc.) Add to this the exposure of a credit card abuse back when she worked for Greenland Tourism and you get a picture of someone who has always had a dodgy moral and a problematic relationship to trusted funds. So this seems to be the famous straw.. and her Siumut colleagues simply don't want to be seen as identical to the pre-2009 "Old Siumut" with its legacy of incompetence, camaraderie and petty fraud since this would be toxic for the party's future as the natural party of government in Greenland

Acting PM Kim Kielsen has just announced that Greenland will be holding an election at November 28!  

Right after stepping down as NATO General Secretary Anders Fogh Rasmussen launched his new  international consultancy firm Rasmussen Global (http://rasmussenglobal.com) dealing in lobbyism & communication and offering lectures, so he is doing a "Tony Blair light" instead of returning to Danish politics.

The front image on the consultancy page:
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Conservative leader Søren Pape Poulsen (42) presented his Dominican boyfriend Josue Medina Vasquez (29) at the party's annual congress, so he has moved quite a bit since starting out claiming it was irrelevant whether or not he was gay. Not sure how a much younger Latino boyfriend will affect his image with Conservative core voters, though, even if Vasquez is not your traditional toy boy.

Vasquez is educated in international relations and the nephew of the Dominican President Danilo Medina (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danilo_Medina). He is due to start a job at the Dominican embassy in Ottawa, so its going to be a long distance relationship.
 
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Weird that he's the nephew of a Dominican Liberation Party president but dating a Conservative. I was under the impression that the PLD was soft Chavez-y.

Liberal Alliance leader Anders Samuelsen now suggests that all spontaneous refugees (=non UN quota) seeking asylum in Denmark should be send to Danish run and owned refugee camps outside of Denmark ("a little piece of Denmark" as he says), LA wants the government to negotiate deals with Jordan, Lebanon or Israel about selling plots of land for Danish run refugee camps to receive Syrian refugees. Israels ambassador declined to comment before there is an official request.. Deep silence from Jordan.

DPP has suggested this a few days ago (they said prefer Kenya.. which they got ridiculed for) and claims that the number of asylum seekers would drop drastically if asylum seekers could not actually get into Denmark

The Liberal leader Lars Løkke Rasmussen calls the proposal from Liberal Alliance "interesting". The moderately Libertarian LA has hitherto been seen as the most humanistic party on the Danish (centre-)right wing, but a cost/benefit approach to the matter has made them agree with DPP on this.

A total stop for asylum seekers on Danish territory will be a key DPP demand to support a coming Liberal government and with Liberal Alliance on board the pressure increases, many Liberals would probably also support this - not the Conservatives, but they are of no importance with the current poll numbers.

Social Liberal foreign affairs spokesperson Zenia Stampe says it reminds her of the idea from the 1930s of sending European Jews to Madagascar.

EDIT: The Liberal-Conservative government actually tried the external refugee camp solution back in 2004, when then Integration Minister Bertel Haarder (Lib.) tried to persuade the Kenyan government take Somali refugees from Denmark to a Danish run camp in exhcange for aid in developing their internal asylum system, but the Kenyans declined, so its all a bit "old hat".

Minister of Justice Karen Hækkerup has left the Danish government and is new CEO of Food and Agriculture after former Minister of Defence Søren Gade. She is replaced by SD no. 2 Mette Frederiksen and the SD "multitool" Chairman of their Parliamentary group and Nyrup era veteran Henrik Dam Kristensen is replacing Frederiksen as Minister of Employment.

Its a change from the SD right wing to the left wing on Justice, but it wont matter so close to an election.

The Red Greens call it a democratic problem, that a cabinet member switches directly to becoming CEO for a powerfull interest organization.

Losing one of her most popular ministers is bad news for HTS and yet another sign that many in the SD top don't think the government can get reelected. It will be interesting to see who the next rat to abandon the sinking ship will be.

Today two new political actors emerged on the Danish political scene, one on either side of the political spectrum.

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Despite its name, Nationalpartiet (the National Party) is a new left-wing party founded by three Pakistani immigrant brothers and their friends. Their main policy is "to defend the Danish values of tolerance, respect and openness". They argue that those values, which were so prominent when their parents immigrated to the country, are now under attack. The concrete policy proposals include removing some of the tight immigration policies like the rules regarding family reunification. In addition to that they have adopted a couple of classic welfare lines like "a higher quality in the schools" and "less bureaucracy, more warm hands".
The leader of the party is the 35-year old teacher Kashif Ahmad. He was surprisingly elected to the city council in Hvidovre municipality for a local list in 2013 which he had joined a few months before. 8 months after being elected he left the party and was criticized heavily by the remaining members.
The party will have a very hard time entering parliament. Practically they have to collect 20 000 signatures via a quite cumbersome process to even be on the ballot, and politically they have to fight not only the four existing centre-left/left-wing parties, but also the other new leftish party Alternativet, which have already collected 10 000 signatures and is led by the former Social Liberal Minister of Culture, and still MP, Uffe Elbæk
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At the complete opposite end of the spectrum, Lars Hedegaard has decided to run as an independent. The 72-year old was originally a marxist historian, journalist and editor; he was a member of Socialistisk Arbejderparti (Socialist Workers Party) until 1982. However, in the last 10-15 years, he has been known as a quite prominent and radical islam-critic. Until recently he led the Trykkefrihedsselskabet (Free Press Society), which have focused mainly, but not exclusively, on the the perceived negative effects of islam on free speech in Denmark.
In 2009, he was charged with racism after being taped while making very offensive statements about what he called the ingrained role of rape, paedophilia and the oppression of women in islamic culture. He was acquitted as his statements were not intended to be made public.
In 2013, he survived an assasination attempt outside his home. The suspected assailant was caught in Turkey earlier this year, but last week it was declared that the suspect had been released again by the Turkish authorities, perhaps in a prisoner exchange with ISIS. This has received some attention, and caused a minor diplomatic problem between Denmark and Turkey, which is probably why he is making his candidature public now.
His proposed policies include a ban on muslim immigration and mosque building, re-introduce border controls, leave the EU and the undesirable UN conventions, privatize the national broadcaster DR, re-introduce discipline in the schools, and strict law and order laws.
Although Lars Hedegaard is a relatively famous face, it will be almost as hard for him to be elected. As an independent it is easier to run as he only needs about 200 signatures in the electoral region in which he is running. But he will need around 20 000 votes in an electoral region of around 600 000 voters to be elected, which will be difficult to achieve. He is supported by the small party Dansk Samling (Danish Unity), which is mentioned on the previous page, but his main problem is of course that most of his policies can be found (in a slightly less radical version) in DF who are set to have a very good election.
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Its a minimum of 150 signatures, not "around 200".

For what it is worth Hedegaard has stated, that he was raised in a Social Democratc family and still consider hiself to be "on the left" and in favour of the welfare state. He is on the opposite side of Nationalpartiet on immigration and most other value based areas, but not really on the socioeconomic scale.

As a curiosum Nationalpartiet in the form "Nationalpartiet Danmark" was the name of a far right party - started by breakaway neo-Nazis - which was active in the 90s and early 00s. So especially with the added "We are Denmark" slogan which is used as a kind of subtitle they are getting pretty close (which is probably partly intended as they want to redefine far right symbols, but still weird).

Ten Kurdish men aquited for support of terrorism in the Copenhaghen City Court yesterday. They were accused of collecting 140 mio. kroner (roughly 25 mio. $) for PKK.

The Icelandic Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsons Progress Party is at a post-election low with 8,7% in a new poll in Fréttablaðið (down from 24,4% in the 2013 election), while their coalition partners in IP are at 30%+. The opposition would win 37-26 if those numbers were to hold. Bright Future, which was close to being Icelands biggest party a couple of months ago, is down to 10,6%, far behind SDA and also behind the Left Greens. For the first time since the election the two leftist parties are above 1/3 at 36,2%.

PP 8,7% 6 (-13)
IP 30,3% 20 (+1)

SDA 23,1%
Left Greens 13,1%
Bright Future 10,6%
Pirates 10,1%

Others 4,1%

Iceland has ... odd politics. Why is it the only country where Pirates have remained feasible for more than a year? Why does everyone still support IP? Why did Progress think it would be a good idea to campaign against Islamic immigration, in a country with pretty much no Islamic immigration?

Mainly because their leader Birgitta Jonsdottir has charisma and has proven to be a very capable politician. Its the classical one (wo)man populist party. The second reason is infighting among the Left Greens that would be the obvious alternative for many of their young voters.


Firstly, the centre-right is at 39% in this poll, so the overall picture is that the centre-left is solidly ahead. Secondly, 30% for IP is still low historically speaking (it used to be a 40%+ party). Thirdly, where else would conservative voters go? Especially with PP in crisis. The governments first 1,5 years in office has made it very clear, that IP is a more professional outfit and has far fewer loons than PP. Apart from one scandal involving leaks of confidential info from the Justice Department, all other "affairs" and gaffes (and there has been a lot) have involved PP politicians.  


It wasn't a decision approved by the national party, but one made single-handedly by the lead candidate in the Reykjavik municipal election in a desperate situation where the party stood to be wiped out in the capital (and it worked..). PPs immigration policy (which is quite liberal), hasn't been changed afterwards.

PP is not in crisis because of the "Islam-stunt", but mainly because it is by now adamantly clear that their big idea of blackmailing foreign creditors to cough up with enough money to help out debt ridden Icelandic home owners was a giant bluff. On top of that you can add lots of small scandals, village idiot type gaffes and a clearly incompetent Foreign Minister + messing up the EU question with denial of a referendum and a stop to negotiations before they were finished (which satisfies their core supporters, but not all the new suburban and mainly centrist voters they got last time).

Iceland is an odd country so it should come as no surprise that it also has odd politics. Given the events of the past decade it's maybe not surprising that political life there has only got stranger. The Independence Party has deep roots; even in 2009 it could only be knocked down to 24%. It's difficult to truly kill a party that has a true social base, even if it disgraces itself spectacularly. This is obviously particularly true in a conservative society like Iceland.

The Independence Party having more members than all other parties combined with almost 10% of Icelandic voters as party members was certainly the main factor that allowed them to survive the crisis relatively unharmed, but there is also the sheer lack of a credible alternative on the right wing (which is still the case, since the rumoured pro-EU breakway party hasn't materialized yet).


Even if Icelandic politics definitely still has its quirks the general trend has been towards normalization since the 2008-2010 rupture - where the citizens movement and joke parties challenged the system - most importantly with a new stable 6 party system replacing the traditional 4 party structure.

The pattern has been: old equilibrium-crisis-strong swing to the left-strong right wing correction in the 2013 election and now what seems to be a new equilibrium with 35-40% centre left, 35-40% centre-right and a social liberal party with 10-15% set to hold the balance of power if the numbers hold up. The only oddity in this party system is the Pirates, but having a populist party is relatively normal - Iceland's is just not of the common European right wing populist type - which reflects both its low level of non-European immigration and euroscepticism being a mainstream position already taking by (most of) the mainstream centre-right.

One of the last imbalances - the extremely weak left wing after the 2013 election - seems to be disappearing at the moment with the two traditional centre-left parties back above 35%.


As to Iceland being a conservative society I would say that Icelandic society exhibits its own peculiar mix of traditionalism, clientilism, nationalism, openmindedness, out of the box-thinking and very progressive attitudes and also combines rugged individualism and communal thinking in a way that is rather unique, but closer to certain parts of North America than continental Europe.

The pro-independence part of the Faroese opposition (Progress Party and Republicans) wants the Faroe Islands to gain control over their foreign policy, this demand comes after several conflicts between Denmark and the Faroes, the latest over sanctions against Russia, which the Faroese government has declined to follow, claiming it is a trade matter and not foreign policy!

The current Faroese centre-right government contains both unionist and separatist parties and this motion puts the pro-independence People's Party under pressure since they fully agree with its content, while the Lawman's ("Prime Minister") Union Party is strongly against it. The motion will come up for debate in the Løgting in early November.

Apart from disliking that the Danish parliament implemented sanctions against Russia without consulting the Faroese government about possible economic consequences, they are also disgruntled about not being consulted regarding Danish participation in the ongoing air campaign against the Islamic State - getting formally involved in yet another military operation without being heard.

The most bitter conflict between Denmark and the Faroes stems from the EU ban on Faroese mackerel and herring export and landing last year, where the ban required Copenhagen to side with Brussels in the quota dispute and ban Faroese fishing vessels from entering Danish ports and stopping the islands export to Denmark. The Faroese feel that the Danish government was much too compliant towards EU and should have declined to implement sanctions against a part of its own state (and I fully agree with them...).

"Should the same country that recently imposed sanctions on us ask us to boycott Russia? That would be insane”

Lawman Kaj Leo Johannesen (UP)

http://arcticjournal.com/politics/1104/mission-torshavn (http://arcticjournal.com/politics/1104/mission-torshavn)

#the Progress Party is not centrist as the article says, but the most right wing party on the Faroes.

See https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=199587.0 for the current parliamentary situation and position of the parties.

The Red-Greens and SPP want Denmark to recognize Palestine and will put forward a motion in the Folketing demanding the government to do so next week.

In their 2011 campaigns booth SD and the Social Liberals promised to recognize Palestine, but have since backtracked with arguments that it would undermine the peace process if some EU countries went solo on this. Now that Sweden has done it this argument has weakened (it was never a good one) and the government is forced to either give in or break yet anoter campaign promise (well, it has already been broken, but at least they have had an excuse until now..).
Minister of Foreign Affairs Martin Lidegaard (SocLib) says "its pointlesss to recognize Palestine before we now whether such a state has any possibility of existing."

The Palestinian "state" got diplomatic status in Denmark in 2013 and their representative became an ambassador.

Another profile leaves Danish Parliament for private job

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The former Conservative leader Lene Espersen has decided to leave the Danish Parliament to become the CEO of the interest group Danish Architectural Companies. She has been an MP since 1994, and quickly became one of the most popular MPs. In 2007 and in the last election in 2011, she was the Conservative MP with the highest number of personal votes, and in the 2001, 2005, 2007 elections she ranked 7, 8, and 6 respectively on the overall list of personal votes.

In 2001 she became Minister of Justice, and it was no surprise when she succeded Bendt Bendtsen as leader of the Conservatives, as Deputy PM and as Minister of Economic and Business Affairs in 2008. In the first years of her reign the party increased its popularity slightly, but then in 2010 she became Minister of Foreign Affairs after a major reshuffle. One of her first actions, or rather inactions, was to go a on a family holiday to Mallorca instead of participating in an Arctic 5 meeting in Canada. She was heavily criticized for this decision and her lack of an apology, and at the same time the Liberal Alliance, who was widely predicted to die off in silence, started a well-funded campaign to attack the government, and especially the Conservatives, for the absence of tax cuts and reductions in the public sector during their reign. This caused the party to drop from 11 to 6.5 % in the polls in a few months. By early 2011, the majority of the Conservative MPs had turned against her and she resigned as Conservative leader, but continued as Foreign Minister until the defeat in the 2011 election. As the Conservative group was reduced to 8 MPs, she has obviously still played a key role in the group. When the non-MP Søren Pape Poulsen became the new Conservative leader a few months ago, she became the party's politicial spokesperson, and thereby participated in the debates with the other party leaders.
With her resignation, half (4) of the current Conservative group will not be running at the next election which will lead to the long-awaited generational change in the party.

She's not even 50.  Hard to believe she'd be considered part of the old guard of any party.

Its a party headed towards irrelevance if they don't turn things around and as an ex-party chairman - and a flop at that - she is clearly a has-been.

Politicus is right, but there're also the aspect that she have had the political positions she could expect to get, she's a person who is on the way down not up.

There's also another aspect to consider - as far as "old guard" is concerned - that Nordic politicians are generally much younger than their American counterparts. Relatively few stay in top-level politics after the normal retirement age, and many leave long before that.

Agreement on 2015 budget - now waiting for the election
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Four persons in front: Johanne Schmidt-Nielsen - political spokesperson (they have no leader) for the Red-Green Alliance, Morten Østergaard - Deputy PM, Minister for Economic and Interior Affairs, and leader of the Social Liberals, Bjarne Corydon - Social Democrat Minister of Finance, Pia Olsen Dyhr - leader of SF/SPP

In comparison with last year's dramatic negotiations that ended with a deal between the government and the Liberals and the Conservatives, the budget talks this year were calmer and with a more expected outcome. The government made a deal with SF and the Red-Green Alliance, and from now on it is all really a matter of when the election will be called; the latest possible date is in September 2015.
The most important parts of the budget are the following:
In order to finance the increasing number of refugees coming to Denmark, they use 1 billion kr (130 million euro) which has been cut from the foreign aid and the 0.7 billion kr from the EU re-calculation of budget contributions. The government had originally planned a 2.5 billion kr cut in foreign aid, which made it possible for the Red-Green Alliance and SF to portray this part as a slight victory.
The introduction of a new temporary form of unemployment benefits for those who would otherwise have lost it due to the reform carried out by the previous centre-right majority plus the Social Liberals. The reform meant that you could not get unemployment benefits for more than two years. The new temporary form means that those who were about to lose their benefits with the new reform in 2015 will get benefits for an additional year; this new extra will be phased out during 2016 and 2017. Also the obligation to support each other financially for non-married couples living together will be removed, which means that a person's cash benefits can no longer be reduced or removed due to the income of their partner. This agreement was acceptable to the Social Liberals who can say that their reform is still in place, the Social Democrats can say that that they have made a temporary solution until a new benefit system can be created, while SF and Red-Green Alliance got something but will still be able to criticize the original reform severely.
Also slightly more funds have been distributed to a lot of different areas: health, more kindergarten employees, more home help for the elderly, ecology, nature, the fight against social dumping, and a new light railway in Aalborg.

This is widely seen as a pre-election budget with a number of measures which, expect for the cut in foreign aid, will probably satisfy many members and voters in the parties which made the agreement. Now the remaining question in this term is mainly when the election will be called. If the centre-left parties get a boost in the polls after this budget, they might call it very soon, but otherwise the most likely is probably sometime in the spring of 2015.

Yeah, that is kinda the definition of a has been..

Icelands Minister of the Interior Hanna Birna Kristjánsdóttir resigned Friday to avoid a probably damaging report from the Ombudsman after her ministry leaked confidential info about asylum seekers.

She is staying on as Deputy Chairman for the Independence Party and MP, but if the report is sufficiently damaging this may be untenable.

Only a year ago HBK was by far the most popular centre-right politician in Iceland and perceived to be able to oust her party chairman Bjarni Benediktsson whenever it suited her, so this is a major downturn.

On Friday 28th November the Finnish parliament will (finally) vote on equal marriage.

Here's a summary from Yle (http://yle.fi/uutiset/mps_to_face_conscience_vote_on_gay_marriage/7641808) on the developments around the citizens' initiative and the prolonged handling in the parliamentary committee, that finally allows the full parliament to decide on the issue.

Helsingin Sanomat has a detailed analysis (in Finnish) on individual MPs opinions (http://www.hs.fi/politiikka/a1305901429345). According to them, of the 199 voting-eligible MPs almost half, 96 are publicly known to be supporters of equal marriage rights, while 89 oppose and 14 haven't declared their voting intentions. Therefore getting the majority for the initiative is likely, though unfortunately not certain.

This is not the final vote, because if and when it passes there will be yet one more committee round (but different committee this time) and after that one more full session vote. However tomorrow's vote will be the decisive one, as it will reveal all MPs' stances, and the following committee round and final vote would then just confirm it.

Voting is expected to start after 1pm Finnish time (noon Central European time) on Friday.

For the first time ever a poll (made for TV2) has DPP as the biggest party in Denmark. Last poll in brackets and the election result in the third column (right). All three big parties are still very close.

Social Democrats: 19,8 (20,9) 24,8

Social Liberals: 8,3 (8,5) 9,5

Conservatives: 6,2 (5,1) 4,9

SPP: 6,5 (6,1)  9,2

Liberal Alliance: 5,9 (5,8) 5,0

DPP: 21,2 (20,0) 12,3

Liberals: 20,9 (22,9) 26,7

Red-Green Alliance: 9,4 (9,3)  6,7


Red bloc: 44,8 (45,4) : 50,6

Blue bloc: 55,2 (54,6)  49,4

The Norwegian Student and Academics' International Assistance Fund (SAIH) has decided to launch a year long campaign to denounce the illegal Moroccan occupation of Western Sahara, they are working in colaboration with Polisario in Norway.

Launched under the motto "Western Sahara: 40 years is long enough", the campaign aims at calling upon the Government of Norway to act effectively so that the Saharawi people exercise their legitimate right to self-determination and independence.

It also seeks to intensify pressure on the UN Security Council to enlarge the mandate of the UM Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO), when it is up to renewal next April.

The campaign will work in order that Norway divests from companies that do business in occupied Western Sahara in violation to international law and ethical rules.

The campaign will be marked by several activities to aware and sensitize on the question of Western Sahara, the last remaining issue of decolonization in Africa.

Norwegian Student and Academics' International Assistance Fund (SAIH) is a non-governmental organization working mainly on the support of education in poor countries. It is composed of more than 160.000 students and academics.

The Danish SD Youth League are als working on this, but EU has more or less given up on Western Sahara given Moroccos strategic importance for the union, so dunno if it does any good - and given the kind of government they have in Norway at the moment I am not even sure they can engage them. Still FFs of course.

Immigration to Iceland is on the rise again after the post-crash drop. 8,4% of Icelanders are now immigrants, up from 8.1% last year. If you incl. people with two foreign born parents its 9,5%, almost as high as the pre-crash record of 9,6% in 2009.

The three biggest immigrant groups are: Poles 36,9%, Filipinos 5,2% and Lithuanians, also at 5,2%. The other half is dispersed on a wide range of mainly European and Asian groups.

Unlike most place Icelandic immigrants are not clustered in the towns. The remote West Fiords have the highest immigrant share at 13,2%, followed by Suðurnes at 13,1%, whereas Norðurland West has the lowest share at 4,5%. Still, almost half of all immigrants (14.000) live in Reykjavík. Kjalarnes, a rural district incorporated in Reykjavik in 1998, has the highest share of any district at 36,5% of its 600 inhabitants, mainly Eastern European farmhands.

Only three rural municipalities with 50-60 inhabitants have no immigrants at all: Skorradalshreppur, Tjörneshreppur and Fljótsdalshreppur.

And they voted for equal marriage, by 105-92. This margin is more than expected, and will hold also in the later vote after the final committee round, so this is it now for Finland. Finally we join the other Nordic countries in promoting equality in our laws.

Interestingly, Helsingin Sanomat got several names wrong in their pre-vote analysis. They even had listed some MP as supporter, who actually voted against the initiative today. For the most part though, the MPs who hadn't revealed their stance before now voted for same-sex marriage approval.

Well, most of them. The Faroe Islands are still holding out. So you guys weren't the last.

From autumn 2015 Iceland introduces a "nature pass", which means Icelanders and tourists alike will have to pay 1500 Icelandic kronor to get entrance to the highlights of Icelandic nature - if located on public land. The pass is valid for three years. It is the massive increase in tourism and the maintenance costs resulting from damages and deterioration that lies behind this, but it is controversial because Iceland like most other Scandinavian countries has free access to all non-built up land - the so called "every mans right", which in Iceland dates back to at least  the Jonsbok law collection from 1281. Icelanders may be billed as part of their income tax to limit administration costs and free riding problems. Private land owners can join in and get a share in the proceeds.

It is not yet decided which areas will be included, but it is certain that Geysir, Þingvellir, Gullfoss and Landmannalaugar will be among them

The tourism association fears it will damage Icelands image as a land where you are free to roam wide open spaces and had preferred a room tax instead, and I fully agree with them. A nature pass will create countless conflicts and be very difficult to enforce in many areas.

EDIT: Left Greens also strongly against this, I doubt it will survive a change of government.

To our Finnish posters: Will gay marriage automatically become legal on Åland when it does in the rest of Finland or do their parliament have to approve it separately?

Given that only one Swedish Party MP voted against gay marriage I'm guessing Åland would pass it too anyway.

It will become legal on Åland automatically with the rest of Finland. The autonomy law of Åland (http://www.finlex.fi/sv/laki/ajantasa/1991/19911144) keeps marriage and all family matters as a state issue (5 kap 27 §), with the exception of some inheritance matters. The parliament of Åland will just make sure that none of their property and inheritance laws are affected, before the equal marriage is in force. As Gustaf correctly assumed, Åland is more liberal than Finland in general, they certainly have no problem with applying this law.

That's interesting, it means that the Faroe Islands are both more conservative than Denmark, and have full autonomy in marriage and family matters too, am I correct?

Though, the thing is that while gay marriage now passed the Finnish parliament, it will actually become legal only after the other laws it affects are changed also. This will happen only after the April 2015 elections and will have to be done by the new government elected then. If they work fast, we will have our first gay weddings in 2016, but in case of the new govt purposefully slowing down the process, it may take as far as until 1st of March 2017, before gay marriage is actually in force in Finland :( So... if the Faroe Islands now decide to do it too and work fast, they might still beat us.

Don't worry, they won't. The Faroe Islands are tha Alabama of Northern Europe. Finland could drag this decission out for twenty years and you still would beat them. ;)

Yup.

Actually the two polls conducted on same sex marriage this year showed 61-62% support and 28-32% against, it is just that the SoCons are more influential than the socially liberal segment.

Due to the unionist/separatist split the odds are bad for a genuine centre-left or centre-left/social liberal coalition on the Faroes and a government will normally always include some SoCons in a strong enough position to block such legislation.

They have the socio-economic left-right scale replicated on each side of the unionist/separatist divide with their Conservatives on the separatist side and their Christian Democrats on the unionist side. Plus there are SoCon elements in the main unionist centre-right party the liberal Union Party.

Ideologically it looks like this (with the big parties underlined):

Unionist:

Social Democrats/Christian Democrats/Liberals

Separatist:

Left nationalists/Social Liberals/Conservatives/Very Conservatives

The purple ones are pro-gay rights, the browns are against. I think the best chance would be a government between the two big unionist parties (Social Democrats and the Union Party), but the Union Party is moving rightwards on economics at the moment and are currently in government  with the conservative Peoples Party, so that would require a change in their leadership.

2015 is going to be a major election year in the Nordic countries:

Three out of five sovereign nation states - Denmark, Finland and Sweden (+ Estonia for those of you that consider it Nordic ;) ) - and two out of three autonomous areas (Faroe Islands and Åland). This must be some kind of record? I don't think there has ever been a year where a majority of both nation states and autonomous areas had parliamentary elections.

A shame the Hammond expense scandal in Greenland couldn't have waited a couple of months, so we would have had full house on autonomous areas, but they might have to hold a 2015 election anyway given the result... Norway is out of the question and Iceland is very unlikely because the government know it will lose power, but maybe if IP breaks up in euro-philes and euro-sceptics or get really tired of PP incompetence while their numbers keep getting up, though that is a long shot.

The Finns Party (or "The party formerly known as the True Finns") plan a motion of no confidence against the Finnish government over the common bank resolution fund for the Euro area,

"Finns can be responsible for the Finnish banking system, but Finns being responsible for the French, Italian and Greek banking systems, for example, is unacceptable,"

http://www.helsinkitimes.fi/finland/finland-news/politics/12921-finns-party-to-table-motion-of-no-confidence.html (http://www.helsinkitimes.fi/finland/finland-news/politics/12921-finns-party-to-table-motion-of-no-confidence.html)

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Upside down Europe.
With politics heating up in the frigid Swedish winter we can’t help but get the sense that Europe is turning itself on its head a bit…

http://www.openeuropeblog.blogspot.nl/2014/12/upside-down-europe.html

List of the popularity of the Danish ministers from 1-100. The grey bar shows last year's grade.

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The most popular minister is Mette Frederiksen, the heir apparent in the Social Democrats. Despite some tough jobs as Minister of Employment with an ongoing discussion about how to handle the unemployment benefit reform adopted by the previous government and now as Minister of Justice with a quickly increasing number of refugees, she has managed to be seen as both compassionate and competent by many voters.
The Social Democrat Minister of Finance Bjarne Corydon is second. He is mostly quite popular among the blue voters who see him as a credible and able to deliver some sound budgets and public finances.
The Social Liberal Foreign Minister Martin Lidegaard is way more popular than as Minister of Energy as he has been quite apt in the serious statesman role.
The two new young Social Democrat ministers, Magnus Heunicke and Dan Jørgensen, have made promising starts as well. Both have attracted quite a lot of coverage, although some of it might be somewhat ridiculous like the latter's decision to make an online referendum about what the Danish national dish should be, and been quite quick at reacting to developments within their field.
Also the PM is more popular than she's been for a long time, although 49.4 out of 100 is still not brilliant. The talk about broken promises is not as prominent anymore, the discussion about a possible EU job has emphasised her international reputation, and the many negative cases about the leader of the opposition have probably combined as reasons for her increased popularity.

At the bottom of the list, there are a number of ministers which are rarely noticed like Kirsten Brosbøl and Carsten Hansen. At rock bottom is the new Social Liberal Minister of Higher Education and Research Sofie Carsten Nielsen. She has become quite unpopular among the university boards and students with a plan to cut the number of students within humanities, especially in those educations which are not currently seen as paying off in terms of post-study jobs for the students. Furthermore, she has not handled the plan very well politically, and it seems like a majority without the government will force her to let the reform happen slightly slower and let the universities themselves decide which educations to cut back on instead of letting the Ministry decide upon that.

Given that your Greens are essentially social liberals glossed over with a bit of environmentalism it really is remarkable how weak the Finnish left is compared to the rest of Scandinavia - 25% combined looks like something from Switzerland or thereabouts ;).

Former Deputy Chairman in IP Ólöf Nordal is new Minister of the Interior after HBK despite her not being an MP and currently living in Switzerland, where her husband is CEO of Alcoa. Party chairman Bjarni Benediktsson chose to sideline favourite Ragnheiður Ríkharðsdóttir, who is the most prominent europhile in IP.  He also stated that he chose Nordal because he has "total confidence" in her, which was interpreted by the pundits as a snub to the long list of IP politicians, that where eyeing the post, but didn't get it. Nordal is reasonably popular internally and a trained lawyer, which is the tradition for MoI in Iceland, so probably a good choice - but an unfortunate motivation.

Defence Attorney Thorkild Høyer has filed charges against four MPs for trying to pervert the cause of justice when they publicly denounced that terror convicted Sam Mansour wasn't expelled from Denmark (by a jury split 7-5). It is illegal in Denmark for politicians to try to influence an ongoing court case and since the case could still be appealed at the time the MPs commented Høyer claims that Pia Kjærsgaard, Martin Henriksen and Peter Skaarup from DPP and Inger Støjberg from the Liberals broke the law. The pols are, not surprisingly, up in arms about this and Kjærgård has called it "ridiculous and absurd" and labelled Høyer as "media horny", but I think it would be nice if this could help stop the incessant commenting on ongoing court cases from (especially) DPP.

EDIT: Høyer now adds immigration spokesman Karsten Lauritzen from the Liberals and legal policy spokeswoman Trine Bramsen from SD to the list.. 

The Danish government has agreed with SPP, the Liberals and the Conservatives about a referendum on the Danish exception to EU's judicial policy no later than March 2016. They want it replaced by an opt-in model, where Denmark can join common EU policy on the areas it chooses (which means no automatic participation on asylum policy). Polls show a majority for this model, but DPP wont be happy about this and it might strain the relationship between DPP and the Liberals. No info on whether the other EU countries have accepted this weird model, but I suppose the government has secured acceptance from the major players, otherwise it would be too incompetent, even for HTS & Co.

This was a part of the Lisbon Treaty, which states that Denmark has the option to turn its automatic opt-out model into an opt-in model similar to the British and Irish one. The pro-EU parties then made this agreement which gives each of them a veto on proposals from the other parties to opt-in to anything concerning asylum and immigration. This means that the likelyhood of Denmark opting in to any EU rules on asylum is quite small, and is also an attempt to stop the obvious DPP attack line of "now our strict asylum policies will be weakened significantly". Not that it will probably stop them from using it, but it can perhaps make it less effective.

Okay, I missed that.

It will be a hard campaign for DPP because they will need to get around the fact that their position is tantamount to de facto being against efficient participation in Europol. They will try to make it seem like we can participate in everything important regarding Europol without changing the status quo - but it will be a hard sell. I think the law and order crowd will vote yes - that will get them the tough immigration policies/full Europol-combo.

Yes I think a no is unlikely in this vote, mostly because to vote yes is to de facto continue status quo, while a no would cause a completely new situation.

Copenhagen flight nearly hit by Russian military jet

http://www.thelocal.dk/20141213/copenhagen-flight-nearly-collides-with-russian-military-jet (http://www.thelocal.dk/20141213/copenhagen-flight-nearly-collides-with-russian-military-jet)

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Which area do you think is the most important one, the one politicians should focus on?

Unemployment
Immigration
Economy
Health
Environment/Climate
Education
Taxation
None of the above/don't know

Former Reykjavik Mayor Jon Gnarr plans to unite the Icelandic left wing by reestablishing the People's Party (Alþýðuflokkurinn), which was Iceland's trade union based SD party 1916-2000. Ironically the People's Party was dissolved after the party merged with three other leftist parties (the feminist Women's List, democratic socialist People's Alliance and breakaway SD left wing National Awakening) in 2000 to transform the 1999 Social Democratic Alliance (SDA) into a party, but after most of the members of the three latter parties broke off and founded the Left Greens half a year later the new SDA became more right wing than the old People's Party.

Uniting the Icelandic centre-left seems like an impossible dream, but then again Gnarr has done the impossible before. Even so, he would have to persuade two well established parties to unite and accept a whole new structure + overcome the fact that the experiment has already been tried in 1999-2000.

He also plans to reestablish the old SD daily (in its later years a monthly - closed in 1998) Alþýðublaðið (the People's Paper) to break the right wing media monopoly in Iceland (except the public broadcaster RUV). He plans to create it in a 3D version, which sounds silly, but then again Gnarr wouldn't be Gnarr if there wasn't some crazy twist to his plans.

After three interest rate cuts in 11 days the National Bank of Denmark has stopped issuing government bonds to prevent further increases in the value of the Danish krone.

"DPP should be part of a "blue" government if they get 20% of the votes"
 - Agree: 51%
 - Disagree: 28%
 - Neither: 10%
 - Dunno: 11%

DPP voters:

55% Agree
30% Disaagree


DPP would get more political influence in government than outside?

 - Agree: 48%
 - Disagree: 36%
- Neither 8%
 - Dunno: 9%

Okay, what I don't understand is the following. What kind of people vote for the Liberal Alliance? Why do these people not simply vote for the Radikale Venstre, or, when they are more suburban and richer, for Venstre?

In the Netherlands, the country that has a political landscape probably most similar to Denmark, progressive urban cosmopolitan highly educated people vote for D66. Of course, it would be more difficult for D66 if they would be in the government like Radikale Venstre, because now D66 is clearly to the right of the VVD-PvdA government on economic issues. But still there seems to be an electoral "vacuum" on the progressive right in Denmark that has been filled by I. Is Radikale Venstre too left-wing on economic issues? Is Venstre perceived as too centrist? I'd love to hear a reply from Danish people on this.

The Dutch and Danish political landscapes are not particularly similar - taking that as you point of departure would lead you astray.

The average Radikale voter is richer and better educated than an average Venstre voter. Venstre is especially in its core areas in Jutland a genuine peoples party with a social profile as broad as SD and lots of people with low education and average incomes. Being suburban would not make you more likely to vote Venstre than Radikale - being rural or from a small town would, but having a blue collar job would be an even stronger factor.

Liberal Alliance is the most economically right wing party in Denmark and attracts affluent private sector functionaries and libertarian students. It is significantly to the right of Radikale (and Venstre) on economics and far more libertarian on social issues than Venstre.

Maps of the last election ought to illuminate matters somewhat:

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Hmmm. I think based on policy, VVD and Venstre are quite similar; our SP might be between your SF and the Red-Greens on the left-right scale; the social democrats obviously played a different role in the past in both countries but are still somewhat comparable; Radikale Venstre and D66 are - correct me if I'm wrong - alike; PVV and DF also share some similarities apart from DF's leadership obviously being smarter and less extreme, which makes them at least "toleration" material for coalitions - which is not going to happen anymore in Holland, obviously.

However, conservative voters in Denmark might actually be the type of people that vote VVD in Holland, while Venstre voters in Denmark might be more similar to Dutch CDA voters (except for the fact that these people don't vote for the CDA anymore nowadays). I think the political landscapes do have differences, but I really can't imagine a country with a political landscape as similar to Holland as Denmark.

But I think I've looked too much at policy and not enough at historical voting patterns, which are in Denmark indeed very different from those in Holland. I now understand that, with the (both ideological and electoral) decline of the Conservatives and its move to the center (while accepting the Danish People's Party's policies on immigration, unpopular by a cosmopolitan bourgeois elite), the Liberal Alliance isn't (and hasn't been) as much a threat for Venstre as for the Conservatives. Which makes sense. I now understand the gap that I fills. Thanks.

(And thanks for the maps, Sibboleth!)

You can not really say that the Danish Conservatives are in ideological decline (at least not in the way you seem to think) or have moved to the center. They are more or less where they have always been, but they lost the battle of being the mainstream centre-right party in the 90s and after that poor leadership made them unattractive to voters, while Liberal Alliance captured the low tax message. In addition young people from the bourgeois upper midddle class segmens that used to vote Conservative do not care about "God, King and country" (and if they do, they vote DPP). Being the party of culture, relatively green and supporting urban and landscape planning (which used to be consevative differentation points toward the Liberals) are things the Conservatives have either given up on or toned down, but that can hardly be seen as a move towards the center.

DPP is an alliance between National Conservatives and nationalist/xenophobic (former) Social Democrats. It is not akin to PVV apart from both being right wing populist. The old Progress Party was much closer to PVV.

Liberal Alliance are actually quite tough on immigration, but focused on economic usefulnes rather than ethnic and religious background. It is more no poors, elderly and sick, than no Muslims.

Good point about the old progress party, it's rather interesting how little of the old progress party voting block which vote on DPP today. North Jutland was a stronghold for them, and DPP does worse than average there. In fact it more seem like their voters have gone to the Conservatives instead.

Of course some of that may be personality, both Kirsten Jacobsen from the Progress Party and Lene Espersen have had a great success there. We may see at next election with Espersen stopping, DPP increase significant in the region.

This is reflected in the table of voter movements from the 2011 election, but perhaps the difference is not as big as expected. The extra voters from Venstre might be (the somewhat surprising) Liberal Alliance vote which can be seen in Western Jutland in the map. In that Venstre-dominated area, there was a lot of anger about the closure of the local hospital, and the new super hospital was placed further eastwards. While this was a regional decision, many expected the Liberal PM to intervene and change the decision. Liberal Alliance, along with a regional party, was quite vocal in opposition to the closure. In the latest voter movement poll, there was actually a swingback from the Liberal Alliance to Venstre, which can partly be because this issue is no longer salient as the decision is now irreversible.

The blue bars are men, the orange are for women. The numbers to the left show % of all voters. The one furthest to the right is new voters.

It should be remembered that the movements are from what the predecessor party the New Alliance achieved in 2007. One of their main selling points was opposition to DPP and their immigration policies. This was toned and watered down by the Liberal Alliance in 2011, and since completely reversed, which explains why some voters went back to the Radikale.

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The Dutch and Danish party systems have a lot of apparent similarities, but some of them are deceptive. One of the main differences is that Christian Democracy has been a fairly strong ideology in the Netherlands and totally marginal (+ ”foreign”) in Denmark. Catholicism (even when just a sizeable minority) influences political culture quite a bit – part of it indirectly by affecting the way Protestants act.


Centre-right/right wing

PVV = old Progress Party (although less anarchistic/crazy). Much more economically liberal than DPP and also less authoritarian
SGP = nothing comes even close
VVD = both Venstre and Conservatives (which are almost identical by now)
CDA = no parallel. Its Christian (and partly Catholic) roots seets it apart. The old Anti-Revolutionary Party would have been part of the Conservative coalition, but quite marginal. Most CDA voters would be in Venstre
CU = pretty good fit for our Christian Democrats
D66 = fits Radikale pretty well, but has anti-establishment roots, whereas Radikale is as establishment as you get. Seems to incorporate people to the left of Radikale


Centre-left/left wing:

PvdA = Social Democrats, but (even) more ideologically washed out than their Danish brethren
GL = right wing of SPP (”Green wing”)
SP = Red-Green Alliance + most of the SPP left wing. More traditional party organization than Red-Greens


Odd parties:

PvdD= Fokus (created by former DPP MP ”Animal  Christian” Hansen) – extremely small
50+ = no such party

No Dutch parallel to Liberal Alliance


I made a description of the Danish party system in the election thread on IE.

I agree with the larger part of your analysis. However, the PVV is not economically liberal at all anymore. They were in 2006, and probably still a bit in 2010, but now definitely not at all. In that sense, the PVV is at least now definitely comparable to DF. And less authoritarian? Wilders has said a lot of crazy things about Muslims/Moroccans that DF politicians wouldn't say. He would definitely not be welcome in DF's ECR group. Furthermore, Wilders decides everything in the PVV. There are only two party members: Wilders and the "Foundation for the Friends of the PVV" which is run by... Geert Wilders.

D66 has anti-establishment roots but is nowadays the party that is by many considered the ultimate "regent's party" (as opposed to the PVV).

Thanks for this, Diouf, it's interesting!

Must admit I do no know what sort of economic policies Wildes advocate these days, but DPP has incorporated a lot of SDs along the way and their views on economics and welfare are increasingly old school Social Democratic. I would have thought Wilders was still substantially to  the right of that.
DPP is less radical and more "sane" than Wilders. By authoritarian I did no refer to their internal structure or level of xenophobia, but the opposite of libertarian. I thought Wilders still had a libertarian streak on many issues. He seems anti-conservative, whereas DPP is (among other things) a genuinely conservative party.

D66 may very well have become similar to Radikale.

After advice from the Criminal Law Council the Danish government has decided not to abolish the blasphemy paragraph in the criminal code. This is a U-turn for especially the Social Liberals, who have been eager to get rid of what they saw as a dated special status for religion.

No one has been convicted for blasphemy since 1933, while the last trial was in 1971 and legal scholars generally consider the paragraph invalid because it conflicts with free speech protection, but the CLC says it protects against something like burning or urinating on holy scripture such as the Bible and Koran.

The council stated that legalizing blasphemy could be twisted by foreign media and religious groups and be (mis)interpreted as a general anti-religious act or an act against specific religions, which might provoke a violent reaction.

This is of course controversial as it is basically giving in to the threat of Islamic terrorism or a new cartoon-crisis.

Protests from the Red-Greens, DPP and Justitia (libertarian/conservative think tank). This incl. critique of the CLC even addressing non-judicial matters.

Also, two years ago DPP suggested banning the burning of Dannebrog (Danish national flag) and the Ministry of Justice said that would violate the protection of free speech, which makes the assertion of legal relevance of the blasphemy ban a bit strange.

Battle for party leadership in KD in Sweden. Seems to be between Ebba Busch and Jacob Forssmed.

Busch is the charismatic leader of KD in Uppsala. She got more personal votes than any other candidate for the Uppsala local elections last year and has been a rising star for some time.

She is generally perceived as being on the right-wing of the party, emphasizing more secular conservatism than traditional religious ideas. She talks a lot about curbing the powers of the state. She seems smart and young, is a woman (pretty good looking too) and, IMO, has the right type of ideology to get some votes back to a party in deed crisis. The main drawbacks are I guess the same things, youth, might be seen as too radical a shift, etc. Also, she is not in parliament which is often seen as a drawback. Then again, it seemed to work fine for S with Löfven. She is also giving birth soon but she basically told the media to get over themselves with regards to that.

Forssmed I know little about, but he's apparently more to the left and a compassionate conservative. He also seems more linked to the party establishment and the current line. Not well known outside of the party.

So far, Busch has a clear lead in district nominations but most of the big districts are yet to declare.

Really... ?I will have to disagree with you here Gustaf.  If Busch seemed any more cold she'd be the ice queen from Narnia. Busch might be charismatic for KD, but really, that's not saying much.

Cmon Johan, you are the one that wanted a separate Sweden thread. No need to answer him here.

MMR poll for Iceland has PP up nearly 4% from the last poll. The Pirates remain on their record level from mid-January and are close to the rest of the non-IP parties.

IP 25,5 (-1,8)
Bright Future 15,0 (-1,9)
SDA 14,5 (-1,4)
PP 13,1 (+3,7)
Left Greens 12,9 (+1,0)
Pirates 12,8 (-)

Is there still a separate Sweden thread?

And, yeah, by Swedish standards I think she is. I've seen her speak live and was relatively impressed.

Forum for Kritiske Muslimer (Forum for Critical Muslims) led by Finnish-Syrian Sherin Khankan has announced they will start a mosque in Copenhagen, where female imams will deliver the sermon and the prayer for both women and men. Their project is called Femimam - Female Imams. They got four academically (Islamic theology) trained women ready for the positions.

http://www.information.dk/526088 (http://www.information.dk/526088)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_as_imams (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_as_imams)

()

Yes, but since Gustaf posted it here I assumed he'd be more likely to see my reply here. ;)



Well we'll have to disagree then I guess.

I'll admit that I'm basing my impression of her mostly from the documentary series Kommunpampar, were I really thought she came across as a stiff and cold careerist. But I've seen here preform decently in debates about affermative action since then, but not enough that I'd qualify her as charismatic.   

Oh, I haven't seen that. I'm sure she is a careerist. But that can be spun away. :P

Also, Sweden isn't exactly bathing in charisma when it comes to politics, so...