Jacob Christensen

April 26, 1986 was the first warm spring day in Copenhagen. During the spring semester of 1986, I had a rather odd schedule: One of the courses I followed (European Security Policy with Wilhelm Christmas-Møller as teacher), had classes during the morning and the other (Theoretical approaches to international politics with Bertel Heurlin) during late afternoon.

So, what to do when you have three hours betwees classes and it’s finally warm outside? You go for a walk.

If my memory doesn’t fail me completely, I spent some hours walking around Kastellet – a beautiful old garrison in the northern part of the old town – enjoying the sunshine. It was only when I came home in the evening that I learned that the Chernobyl power plant had exploded.

My immediate reaction was to shut all of my windows because of the radiation. My next reaction was to think that there was no reason to do so: First, Denmark hadn’t been hit too hard by the fallout from the disaster and second, as I had been outdoors for much of the day, I would already have been subjected to any possible fallout and an open window wouldn’t make too much of a difference.

And the rest, as they say, was history.

This is a repost of an original blog post from 26 April 2006. One of the links caused some problems in the original version and I had to figure out how to edit it.

Today, a number of leading Danish Social Democratic MPs moved on in order to seek new challenges.

Or to use a phrase less contaminated by managementspeak: Helle Thorning Schmidt sacked the chairman of the parliamentary group, Jan Pedersen, and the party’s political spokesman, Lotte Bundsgaard.

Several other spokesmen also had to leave their posts in a reshuffle that made room for representatives of what is now commonly known as “the Frank Jensen-wing” in the party.

As political spokesman, Lotte Bundsgaard had been criticized for lacking the ability to mobilise Social Democratic members and potential voters but she managed to comment her sacking with one of the deadliest soundbites from modern Danish politics:

One of my tasks has been to comment the opinion polls and it’s beyond any doubt that appearing like another Comical Ali every time a new poll was published wasn’t the funniest job in the world.

Groucho Marx couldn’t have said it any better.

Saturday’s Washington Post had a column by Craig Shirley entitled How the GOP Lost Its Way. I’m just making a note about it, because the conflict Shirley discusses has some striking parallels with the conflict between the Conservative Party (the elitists, in case you wondered) and the Danish People’s Party (the populists – well, duh!) that has graced Danish politics during the last weeks or so.One important difference is of cause that Denmark has been spared the corruption scandals which have plagued the Republicans in the US. And the governing coalition in Denmark is not exactly on the verge of losing its majority or disintegrating from within.

A Week in Danish Politics

• The Social Democrats presented a plan for improving public welfare services. Fine but not surprising. What was surprising was the fact that no-one in the party apparently had access to or bothered to check the Statistical Ten-Year Review – available through any well-assorted bookshop – when they made the claim that 70.000 people had fallen into poverty during the reign of the present government. The problem was that the trend started during the previous government. (please don’t bother me with complaints about the actual number – I’m writing this without access to the relevant papers – just give me the correct numbers )
• The Danish People’s Party did not bring down the government or the Minister for Consumer Affairs, Lars Barfoed. But it is obvious that the DPP and the Conservatives aren’t exactly in love.

Books I Managed to Read (and Enjoyed Reading)

• David Greenberg: Nixon’s Shadow. A really fascination analysis of one of the most enigmatic politicians ever. Greenberg doesn’t solve the enigma – and that is the point of his book.
• Susanne Hegelund and Peter Mose: Håndbog for statsministre. Two former political journalists discuss the state of political leadership in Denmark. Something is – if not rotten, then worth considering.
• Geert Mak: Der Mord an Theo van Gogh. A Dutch describes the moral panic that gripped the Netherlands following the murder of Theo van Gogh by a Muslim extremist.

I will do my very best to write some posts about Greenberg’s and Hegelund and Mose’s books in the not-too-distant future.

Completely Off-Topic But Worth Mentioning

• Det Ny Teater has staged a wonderful production of Mel Brooks’ crazy musical “The Producers. Two-and-a-half hours of pure joy and crazy antics.
• Finally, I managed to see Anders Østergaards documentary about the legendary Danish rock-group “Gasolin’”. Ah, sweet memories – and Franz Beckerlee’s recitation and comments about the lyrics to “Langebro” said it all.

A Casual Encounter

• So, there I was, standing on the platform at Østerport Station waiting for a commuter train when this guy comes walking pulling his bike along the platform. But who was he? It turned out that he was none other than the one and only Mogens Lykketoft. Could you even imagine Gerhard Schröder pulling off the same stunt at a S-bahnhof in Berlin?

The German Social Democrats today lost their chairman as Matthias Platzeck after only 5 months in office declared his resignation.

Platzeck had been ill for two weeks with a stress-related ear problem but at today’s press conference, it emerged that he had suffered two earlier breakdowns during his term in office.

Platzeck will be replaced by his deputy Kurt Beck who is the prime minister of Rheinland-Pfaltz and the only Social Democrat to lead a SPD majority government at the state level. Whether Beck can lead the SPD back to its former glory remains to be seen.

Update: On Monday Die Zeit published a review of Platzeck’s short stay as SPD chairman entitled “Tears and Frustrations“.

So, I thought it was safe to take a vacation.

It wasn’t: The Danish Social Democrats are in more trouble.

Deep trouble.

To make a short recap: On Friday 1) the Social Democrats managed to achieve less than 20% of the votes in the latest opinion poll (what do they think this is: Eastern Germany?), 2) the Social Liberal Party declared the dissolution of the opposition coalition with the Social Democrats.

My colleague Nick Aylott (assisted by another of my colleagues, Flemming Juul Christiansen of Århus University) has a review of the developments at the PSA Scandinavian Politics site.

Yes, indeed: I am on vacation until April 20 and will probably not be posting on the blog during that period.

Please note that comments are moderated and that they will not appear on the blog until I accept them.

I know that there are some fascinating things going on at the moment: The story about Gerhard Schröder’s involvement in Gazprom is just one of them. And in case you haven’t read it, check out Fareed Zakariah’s Op-Ed piece To Become an American on Washington Post’s homepage.

A former colleague once argued that during a university lecture – any university lecture – one third of the students were actually paying attention to the lecture, one third sound asleep and one third thinking about – erm – sex.

Now, the M.I.T. promises to give us the ability to peek inside students’ heads. The question is: Did we really need a machine to tell us that most lectures are boring?

The Constitutional Committee of the Swedish Parliament published its findings regarding the performance of the Swedish government during the 2004 Tsunami desaster last Friday. The report can be found through this link.

Prime Minister Göran Persson was criticised for lack of preparations for the event of a disaster. The committee also found that Persson and a number of other government ministers had been far too passive during the first days following the disaster.

Persson responded by declaring that the criticism was outdated and showed lack of understanding for the workings of the Chancery.

Yes, I am aware of the Danish government’s proposals for social and labour market policies which were announced today (you can get a Danish version through the homepage of the Prime Minister’s Office) but due to other work, I don’t really have the time to post anything serious about it.

The worst case scenario is that I will not have the time until before after Easter. Sorry.

Update: The worst case scenario occured. Apologies. It would have been a killer of a post. No, really.