The general election in Denmark on February 8 produced few surprises and left the Liberal/Conservative minority government in control for another 4 years.
The balance of support between the "government" and "opposition" blocs was essentially unchanged with significant shifts occurring within rather than between these.
The Socialdemocrats ran a lack-lustre campaign under a compromise leader, Mogens Lykketoft, and failed to distinguish themselves from the Liberals who stole much of their welfare state agenda. Lykketoft resigned on election night and the party is now in the throes of a leadership battle.
The "traditionalists/oldlabour" types are represented by Frank Jensen who recently shocked polite opinion by using the word "classstruggle", while and Helle Thorning Smidt represents the Blairite wing and has her roots in the trade union bureaucracy.
The issue is likely to be resolved by a membership ballot. The outcome of this will be crucial to the level of resistance to government policies in the next 4 years. This is the worst socialdemocrat result since the early 1920s and the first time they've failed to oust a Liberal-led government after one term in living memory.
The Socialist Peoples Party (SF), which has been in decline for 20 years, did worse than polls predicted. It failed to win SD voters by becoming more friendly to the EU project and lost out to the Red-Green Unity List on the left.
Its leader Holger K Nielsen also chucked his hand in pretty quickly. There is a 3-way leadership contest emerging between one candidate who promises much of the same and two who want to pull the party further to the right. The most visible representative of the anti-EU left minority Morten Hormann decided not to stand for personal reasons. The humanistic centre
Undoubtedly the biggest winners were the Radicals (socially wet but economically dry as bones) who hoovered up votes from the other centre parties, middle class social democrat votes, more humanistically inclined supporters of the right and many immigrant votes because of their opposition to the government and Danish Peoples Party immigration policies.
What can one say of the Centre Democrats (CDDenmark's SDP), the Christian Democrats and the Minority Party? CD seem to have given up, squeezed to death by the Radicals and a changing world. The Christian Democrats seem doomed to a bloody internal struggle between their fundamentalist puritan base imthe countryside and people who want a realistic chance of getting elected in the 21st century. The Minority Party achieved the near impossible by getting over 11 thousand votes fewer than the 20 thousand signatures needed to stand! Of snouts and troughs
On the right, interesting things have happened since the election.
Worryingly the Danish Peoples Party (DF) defied the polls by getting two more seats. We are forced to conclude that they are now a part of the furniture in politics. They can be argued with and can even be made to vote the right way on issues that effect their "working-class base" but will not go away. They represent an alienated segment of society - the sort of folk who are frightened for their early retirement, are marginal in their job, don't much like paying taxes, don't have internet and have no garlic at the bottom of their fridge!.
They played to "their" gallery and made the usual noises about the old and sick and being even nastier to immigrants. When they DANMARKS NATIONALBANK
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