Archive for September 9th, 2008
The Male-Female Count
By the way: With Bendt Bendtsen’s resignation, we have four female (Social Democrats, Social Liberals, Conservatives and Danish People’s Party) and three male (Socialists, Liberal Alliance and Liberals) party leaders as well as the Red-Green Alliance’s collective leadership.
links for 2008-9-8
Espersen for Prime Minister?
Forgot about this but as Messrs Rostrup and Qvortrup adress the question about Lene Espersen’s chances for being the next prime minister (instead of Lars Løkkke Rasmussen), I will refer to myself and say: Not likely.
Exit Bendtsen
That Bendt Bendtsen would resign before the next general election was not exactly surprising: The average life-span of party chairmen is somewhere around ten years and Bendtsen really hadn’t more to bring to the position.
That the succession question was solved without a semi-public battle was perhaps slightly surprising. On the other hand, neither Brian Mikkelsen nor Connie Hedegaard had managed to position themselves as serious candidates for the party chairmanship.
Then we have the short-term questions: How will the inevitable reshuffle look like (will Per Stig Møller be replaced as foreign minister? Will there be changes to the Liberal line-up?)? How will the Conservatives do in the campain for the European elections?
And the long-term questions: Will Espersen and co. be able to position the Conservatives better (as in: more electoral support and stronger parliamentary leverage) or is the party stuck in 10%-mode for the forseeable future.
Anyway: For Scandinavian-readers, here’s Jarl Cordua (never a huge fan of Mr. B), Niels Krause-Kjær (a former Conservative spin-doctor who mysteriously presents Ms. E as a Danish Sarah Palin), Thomas Larsen and Peter Mogensen.
Oh, and I still haven’t had my cable-tv or internet up and running in my apartment.