Jacob Christensen

Monty Python once presented the ultimate murder mystery. It had everything you could possibly want: A setting in a sleepy English provincial town (Peterborough, anybody?), an unlikely suspect, a missing corpse, a sharp-eyed secretary, paper clips, twists and turns in the narrative, dramatic music, the kitchen sink.

There was one catch to the story, though. You see, no murder had been committed – hence the missing body – and the plot evaporated into, well nothing. But there was surely a lesson to be learned, the Pythons assured us. (If you don’t believe me, check out the album Matching Tie and Handkerchief where the Peterborough Murder Mystery is presented in all its silly glory).

In my opinion The Peterborough Murder Mystery is a fitting image of Danish politics during 2006: On one level, lots of things happened during the year – the Muhammad crisis, the welfare agreement, the food control scandal which eventually pushed the Conservative Lars Barfoed out of his post as Minister for Families and Consumer Affairs, the cancer treatment affair, controversies over the participation in the Iraq war, the final preparations for the implementation of the local government reform on 1 January 2007 – but on another, deeper, level the question is if anything happened. There was not a chance that the Danish People’s Party would bring down the government despite various hits at Conservative politicians and not a chance that the Liberal-Conservative government would ditch the DPP in favour of an alliance with the ailing Social Democrats.

But New Year 2007 is looming so to do the decent thing, I’ll be bringing you three highlights of Danish politics 2006. And Mohammad will not be featured.

The Social Liberals Go It Alone. Sort Of

Right-wing commentators have had an easy 2006 as the predicaments of the Social Liberal Party provided an obvious target for political scorn: On the one hand, the Social Liberals were uneasy about their position in the shadow of the Social Democrats, on the other hand the party had no real clue about what to do about its situation. Some wanted to push a liberal reform agenda, others wanted to emphasise the traditional links to the Social Democrats. In the end, the party took the plunge and to the astonishment of most of the electorate declared that the Social Liberals would aim for a government under the leadership of Marianne Jelved.

Given that neither the Social Democrats, the Liberals or the Conservatives favoured the idea, it seemed to be a doomed strategy. And, in case you wonder, I think it is.

What is worth considering is this isn’t the first time the Social Liberals have tried the go-it-alone strategy. The most famous case before “Jelved for Prime Minister” was the “It’s Springtime and Niels Helveg”-campaign in 1988 (no, the slogan doesn’t make sense in Danish either) which ended in a spectacular failure – the most likely explanation was that no-one except the members of the Social Liberals’ parliamentary group understood the manoeuvrings of the party in the submarine debate which led Prime Minister Poul Schlüter to call early elections in the spring of 1988.

And if you read the minutes of the opening debates of the Folketing from the 1980s, you will find several instances where the then leader of the Social Liberal Party, Niels Helveg Petersen, or other representatives of the party present alternative “opening speeches” that make no reference to the Prime Minister’s state of the nation speech. The strategy has never been successful and in many cases not even noticed by media and voters but it is a staple feature of Social Liberal politics.

So why do the Social Liberals continue to repeat old mistakes? After all they perceive themselves as the smartest party in Denmark.

I think there are two reasons for this: First, the Social Liberals are, and have always been, a house divided. As mentioned above, one part of the party has always seen its natural place as an ally of the Social Democrats while another part sees the Social Liberals as the Party of the Centre, free to choose its partners, left or right. Most parties have dual identities and usually the Social Liberals have been able to handle theirs with relative success. The problem arises when the party’s electorate pull in one direction – say: to the left – and the parliamentary group in another direction – say: to the right. This happened during the 1980s and it may be happening again.

Second, any true Social Liberal would happily sell his or her Mother (and Grandmother and the rest of the family) to gain control of the Median Legislator. Votes and government office are of seconary importance to this price which – to the eternal frustration of right-wing editorialists and trade union officials – has for long periods of time given the Social Liberals the power to control the legislative process as long as the Social Democrats, the Liberals and the Conservatives do not gang up. A Social Liberal Party without control of the median legislator is a very frustrated party.

And this brings us to the question: Who controls the median legislator? (To be continued…)

When I was a young student – back in the early 1980s – leftists has a favourite term they used when they wanted to denounce something or someone: It or he was fascist.

Deciding what was meant with fascist was a trickier matter. It often seemed to me that anything which didn’t adhere to the Marxist fashion of the day could qualify as fascist. Hitler, Mussolini and Franco – okay. But was Pinochet really a fascist? There were many reasons why I didn’t like the Chilean dictatorship but most of mine had with human rigths abuses to do and I was never convinced that Pinochet by close inspection would qualify as anything else than a military dictator.

Mogens Glistrup – a fascist? No, rather a confused right-wing libertarian who at a later stage embraced a rather distasteful form of xenophobia. Reagan as fascist? No, that misses the point completely.

The point of all of this is to send a message to the editor of Berlingske Tidende: Using the term kulturradikal to denounce people you don’t agree with may make you feel better, but please remember you’re not actually saying anything as long as you haven’t provided a reasonably precise definition of cultural radicalism. If you took the effort to do that, you would find that what is presented as cultural radicalism has very little to do with real-world phenomena in Danish politics.

And the same goes for Mainstream Media aka MSM, by the way.

Just as I would categorise anyone using the term fascism indiscriminately as a lazy Marxist, anyone using the terms kulturradikal and MSM are hereby awarded the status of intellectually lazy Conservative.

PS: If you’re familiar with discourse analysis, you will of cause know that terms such as fascist, kulturradikal and Mainstream Media can be seen as empty signifiers.

My take on 2006 in Danish and Swedish politics will be published sometime next week. (Yes, I, too, have to buy Christmas presents). Meanwhile, enjoy the Christmas tree:

Carin Jämtin definitively leaves the Riksdag to become full-time leader of the opposition in the Stockholm City Council and puts herself out of the race to become new chairman of the Social Democrats. Margot Wallström says “no” to any offer to take over after Göran Persson.

Oh, and Anna Sjödin was forced out of office as chairman of the Social Democratic Youth Federation after she was refused the right to appeal her conviction for drunk and disorderly behaviour to the High Court.

Some short notes about Erik Sandberg’s documentary Spionskolan about the Swedish Liberal Party:

First, could you please turn down the music? Adding “dramatic” music to make a documentary feel like a cheap horror movie is really annoying.

Second, if you are a responsible parent you should never, ever let your son or daughter join a the youth organisation of a political party. Any political party. Sex, alcohol, drugs and rock’n'roll (or whatever the kids listen to these days) is ok but not political youth organisations. They are an evil parody of any kind of political activity.

Third, Sandberg raises a very important question but doesn’t quite follow his lead all the way. The question is what happens with a party that gives up the idea of being an ideologically based mass party in favour of a strategy built on media presence on a small number of topics where the party systematically and slavishly tails initiatives from the main competitor.

Four, the vitnesses which were produced may deserve closer scrutiny. Some, like the controversial MEP Maria Carlshamre have had personal axes to grind with the party leadership, others like Per Jodenius face criminal charges, still others like Aaron Israelson have left politics in disgust.

Instead of watching Den hemmelige krig (see previous blogpost), I went for the first episode of Fredrik Lindström’s new series Världens modernaste land (The World’s most modern country).

The homepage of the series also includes a “lagom”-test of Swedishness. I made it to 80% which raises the question: Have I been assimilated after 8 years or are Danes and Swedes fundamentally alike?

What does “lagom” actually mean? The word has no direct equivalent in Danish or English – suitable seems to be the best match. What is interesting is that the etymology of the word suggests that its original meaning is “in accordance with the laws”. This speaks volumes about Sweden.

Die Zeit discusses the mental health of school teachers with the psychologist Uwe Schaarschmidt.

Two topics for discussion:

1. Can these results be applied on other forms of education as well?
2. In the end of the interview, Professor Schaarschmidt seems to imply that the problems teachers face in handling their work basically arise because aspiring teachers have chosen their line of work on the wrong premises (leisurely hours, long holidays). How does this add up with the arguments made earlier in the interview?

Embarassed update: Burned-out cases? d’oh! It’s burnt-out cases.

Thank you so much for the attention (Link: Time – Person of the Year 2006) but let’s not overdo it. There may be a lot of senders on the internet but that doesn’t necessarily mean that all that is sent is also received by someone.

And I would also be careful to predict the demise of traditional media and hierarchical structures even if we may be about to see some profound changes in general and specialist publishing (c.f. this blog post by John Holbo).

Earlier this week, Swedish Television rebroadcasted Christoffer Guldbrandten’s documentary Den hemmelige krig (The secret war) about the treatment of prisoners taken by Danish military forces in Afghanistan. The allegation made by the documentary is that the military, and in the last resort the Danish government, handed over prisoners to U.S. authorities knowing that U.S. treatment of Afghan prisoners breached the Geneva Conventions. (To start somewhere: Wikipedia on Guantánamo Bay detainment camp).

What is interesting is the quick rebroadcasting as Swedish media usually ignore Danish politics. Sweden isn’t directly involved in the Afghan operation so the documentary has no immediate implications for Swedish foreign or national policy. I have the programme recorded but haven’t had the time to watch it, so I can’t make any relevant comments about the documentary and the allegations made. Perhaps one note could be that the controversy surrounding and resignation of Lars Barfoed may have deflected any impact on Danish politics the docummentary might have had.

Just to add to my misery, SvT will be airing what could be an interesting documentary about the Swedish Liberal Party tonight. According to the press release, the documentary Spionskolan (The Spy School) will reveal a paranoid and conspiratory culture within the party which eventually led to the intrusion scandal that marred the party’s election campaign and has seen six officials facing legal charges. Maybe the Liberals should have enlisted a professional.

Latest News from the Shooting Gallery: Lars Barfoed today announced that he resigns as Minister for Consumer and Family Affairs following the publication of a highly critical report about food control procedures.

In my opinion the resignation in itself wasn’t surprising but what was slightly surprising was the speed of the process: Mr. Barfoed resigned his post one day after the publication of the report and even if the Danish People’s Party had declared that it no longer had confidence in him, the position of the government’s supporting party was – as usual – never really tested.

I think the resignation can be interpreted in two ways: On the one hand, it can be seen as yet another sign of the parliamentary power that the Danish People’s Party holds – and it’s a well-known fact that the DPP has set its eyes on a number of the Conservative ministers. The relationship between the Conservatives and the DPP generally seems strained.

On the other hand, the quick resignation also gives the Conservatives the opportunity to present themselves as the harmed part and blame the DPP for political opportunism: After all, the problems in the food control go back to Ritt Bjerregaard’s days as Minister for Agriculture and Food and Mr. Barfoed has argued that he was working on setting up acceptable procedures for food controls.

In the meantime, Transport Minister Flemming Hansen (also from the Conservatives and another of the DPP’s favourite targets) was let off the hook in the case of the delayed delivery and deployment of the Danish Railways’ new Intercity trainsets.

Update: This post seems to have become a favourite target for comment spammers so I’ve closed comments.