Yes, It’s a Parrot but It Is Not Dead. Yet.

As the saying goes in Danish: When the cat is out, the mice are dancing, and during the last week, the mice have definitively done some dancing while prime minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen spent a week on vacation with his family. The culmination came on Sunday when unnamed sources in the Liberal Party criticised Løkke for his lack of leadership.

It is easy to see why the Liberals are restless: The PM has faced difficulties (to say the least) in promoting his “Project 2020“, there are problems with getting the Conservatives to play in tune and countless stupid little stories have conquered the political agenda (I mean: How the €%#” did lunches in kindergardens become a national political issue dominating the agenda for two weeks?). Add a lacklustre performance by the PM at COP15 and his mysterious failure to appear at the ambassadors’ meeting and things look – well, messy.

So now the Liberals are down at the level from 1998 in opinion polls and, horror of horrors, his Social Democratic challenger after five years finally enjoys the same level of confidence as the PM. Not good.

And we may ask: What went wrong and what can be done about it?

One thing which is noteworthy is that the Liberals do not appear to be a party in internal conflict over policy – this is not like the British Conservatives in the 1990s who fought endless battles over the legacies of Thatcherism and Europe, eventually tearing the party apart. There are, all things considered, no liberal zealots waiting in the wings. But as I have noted before, I see Løkke as a more ideologically motivated politician than Anders Fogh so the lack of ideological profile is a bit surprising.

If we look for major issues, then the relationship between the Liberals and the Conservatives merits attention – with the interesting twist that the Conservatives despite all attempts to raise their profile are stubbornly stuck at 10 per cent of the vote. Unlike the 1970s or the 1990s, it is not like the Conservatives are locked in a deadly contest with the Liberals over voters. It could be that the Conservative weakness is part of Løkke’s problems: The Conservatives need attention and they can make a splash in media but they are too week to really have leverage on government strategies.

Løkke’s fumbling is often contrasted with Fogh’s steely resolve, but we should remember that Anders Fogh did have his moments of clumsiness: Remember the messy negotiations over tax cuts in 2007 and the less than convincing reshuffles the same year? Of course, Fogh’s fumbles were seen as exceptions to a slick performance, while Løkke is now generally expected to be a klutz with the occasional bright moment. Maybe an element of positive feedback in the perception of Løkke is playing a role here?

Changing the leader before the next election looks like a dangerous path. Leave aside that the party would have to admit making a mistake in the first place, then the issue would be finding a credible candidate for the party leadership. Søren Gade is bogged down in scandals surrounding the Ministry of Defense and looks even more unreliable as a leader than Løkke. Kristian Jensen is still very young and pulling in Carl Holst from regional politics would be a bit of an experiment.

Well, as the Swedes say: He who lives will see.

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Iraq

The question about the involvement or non-involvement of the Danish Ministry of Defence in the leaking of a story about the deployment of Danish elite troops in Iraq in 2007 has been making the rounds in the media during the last week.

Now, to me there is something deeply problematic about the way the MoD handled the Afghanistan story and to put it bluntly, I wouldn’t buy a used car from someone working there, but somehow the leak story is a minor – and probably not too important – part of a larger story concerning Iraq, something which Niels Krause-Kjær indirectly points to in his latest blog post.

What has had me wondering for quite some time is this: The invasion in Iraq was deeply controversial in a lot of countries and it is fair to say that Tony Blair, José Maria Aznar and maybe one or two other European heads of government effectively lost their mandates due to their decision to support Bush43.

But Denmark stands out as a spectacular exception – it may not be the only country where the government survived Iraq without damage, but the way Anders Fogh Rasmussen and the Danish government has managed to make Iraq in general and the question about the breach of international law in particular a complete non-issue in Danish politics is very interesting.

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Buzzword Bingo

So, there is an EU summit coming up? Who’d have thunk – the good thing about these things being held in Brussels is that nobody except the EU correspondents and the Eurocrats have to care. But thanks to Caroline de Cock aka Linotherhino, we too can have a piece of the action.

Yes, it’s the (almost) official European Council Summit Buzzword Bingo – readily available as a PDF for printing. It even has flexicurity!

PS: Just in case you wonder what a buzzword bingo is, here’s Wikipedia to the rescue.

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Stop Me If You’ve Seen This Before…

Many thanks to Chris Bertram for pointing us to this and to Esben Thomsen for finding a version which fits the template. :-D

Edited: YouTube version of the clip inserted.

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WÃ¥t Gynther Mænt WÃ¥s…

Listen, it could have been worse. It could have been … Helge Sander.

HT: Kosmopolito.

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The Failed Citizenship Exam

The news that one in five Danes and one in three Danish People’s Party voters would fail the citizenship test has been circulating in the twittersphere this morning. Needless to say, the assumed irony is that DF voters on the one hand are most likely to support the test while on the other hand being most likely to fail it.

At least with regard to the second part of the equation, I’m not too surprised: If DF generally appeals to the oldest and least educated segment of the electorate and the citizenship test measures factors related to eductation, then this really is what you should expect.

With regard to the first part, social and educational factors are also likely to be at play. So ideology or perceived political position may be less relevant than education and social status.

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Hedegaard, Langballe and the Noble Art of Argumentation

Like Steely Dan sings: That right-wing hooey sure stunk up the room. In this case, the right-wing hooey is Jesper Langballe. Last month’s stinker came from Lars Hedegaard.

How exactly did they stink up the room? Well, obviously by claiming that Muslim fathers en bloc first have their daughters raped by their uncles and then kill them for dishonouring the family.1 Somehow there ought to be a severe shortfall of marriageble daughters in Muslim families so it really would be dysfunctional behaviour, but I suspect that both Langballe and Hedegaard has left the world of empirically based argumentation.

Philosophers and sociologists have tried to explain how extreme forms of thinking develop – basically we are in a closed circuit which denies all outside information and consequently any form of argumentation with people like Hedegaard and Langballe is impossible.

Still, I think it is worth considering what kind of argumentation we are offered to point out where we are leaving useful discourse behind.

Now, at the risk of offering an ad hominem-argument I will point out that Langballe’s background is in Tidehverv, a strange branch of Lutheran theology, while Hedegaard used to be on the University Marxist left. I have some experience with University Marxists2 so I will offer this proposition: Langballe and Hedegaard can be described as manichaeians (in a philosophical, not a theological sense) – they see the world as separated in Forces of Good and Evil. The manifestations of Good in the world are by definition good and the manifestations of Evil similarly evil.

This is why Søren Krarup can argue that it is perfectly okay for Christians to beat up their children (because Christianity is the manifestation of Good) while Muslims who beat their children are evil. Once you acknowledge that Krarup sees Islam as The Force of Evil, you will understand that anything a Muslim does by definition must be evil in his perspective.

That Langballe’s brain is wired like Krarup’s should come as no surprise. In Hedegaard’s case it is just that Islam has replaced Capitalism as The Force of Evil. Ralf Pittelkow, another former University Marxist, no doubt thinks in the same way.

So what about the sexual abuse and murder claims? Well, these can easily be made into variables and subjected to empirical tests – e.g. “What is the risk of a child being sexually abused in a [insert ethnic, religious or socio-economic category] family?”, “To what degree is the victim of sexual abuse blamed for the abuse by [insert ethnic, religious or socio-economic category]?”, “What is the risk of being killed by a member of one’s own family depending on [insert ethnic, religious or socio-economic category]?”, etc, etc.

Generally, the family is a dangerous place but that Hedegaard, Langballe and Krarup no doubt will do their utmost to deny claims of abuse in Christian families – well… wem wundert’s?

  1. Do we have cases of rape victims being punished by courts in Muslim countries for being victims? Yes #1, #2 []
  2. I use this term to separate between Academic Marxists and the truly crazy people populating some sections of the Danish universities in the 1970s and 1980s []
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Defection!

One thing which is notable about the 2005-2007 and 2007-201x parliaments in Denmark is the high number of defections – at least by Danish standards. When Christian H. Hansen decided to leave the Danish People’s Party (after being an MP since 1998) he was MP #7 to change allegiances so far.

If we take the defections by party, this is the list:

New Alliance/Liberal Alliance – lost 4 out of the original 5 MPs (Gitte Seeberg, Naser Khader, Malou Aamund, Jørgen Poulsen), gained one from the Social Liberals (Simon Emil Amnitzbøll). As Gitte Seeberg retired from parliament, she was substituted by Villum Christensen, so LA now has 3 MPs.

Conservatives – lost 1 out of 18 MPs (Pia Christmas-Møller), gained one from New Alliance (Naser Khader)

Social Liberals – lost 1 out of 9 MPs (Simon Emil Amnitzbøll), gained one from New Alliance (Jørgen Poulsen)

Danish People’s Party – lost 1 out of 26 MPs (Christian H. Hansen).

Hansen’s defection is interesting because DF’s main problem has been with the loony right which the party is determined to distance itself from. Hansen on the other hand, defected because he felt that the party put too much emphasis on issues like integration policies and climate change – in short, he looks more centrist on the value dimension than the typical DF MP. Still, what an MP thinks and what attracts voters to DF may be very different things.

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What the Man Said

No, Thor Pedersen did not say that “eventually we can buy the whole world” at that press conference in 2007. That countless estate agents and bankers thought so and behaved accordingly is a different story.

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Wanted: Reshuffle. Have: Feeding Bottles

Well, so much for the predicting powers of the commentariat. But as some guy once said: A week is a long time in politics. Instead of the Big One in the shape of the Mother of All Reshuffles, all we had were kindergarden lunches and feeding bottles.

Enjoy your meal.

So, was this a case of audio feedback (in Danish we would talk of “selvsving” or “rundhyl”) or did anything happen to stop the reshuffle?

Well, your guess is as good as mine. We do know that the eldest son of foreign minister Per Stig Møller died suddenly (but not completely unexpectedly) at the age of 44 and throwing the minister off the cliff might have looked a bit … brutal. Even if the two-day seminar at the end of the week appeared to be the perfect time for a reshuffle.

But then again, Møller has told the story about when he was walking on a beach with his father (former Conservative leader and finance minister Poul Møller) when Møller sr. suddenly tripped Per Stig’s legs making him fall face down in the sand. “That’ll teach you never to trust people”, was Old Møller’s lesson for his son. So Per Stig Møller might not have taken any noises coming from his party leader at face value and could very well have expected to get the sack at any time.

Especially at the most inconvenient one.

Then there is the story that the reshuffle was called off because of policy disagreements between the Conservatives and the Liberals. All very well and possible, but I still doubt if this in itself would block a reshuffle – I mean: You don’t exactly need a new government programme to throw Helge Sander off the train (preferably at very high speed, please) or to split Economic Planning and Trade and Industry into two portfolios. Okay – the latter one might take a bit of explanation.

But as the Swedes say: He who lives will see.

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