And look: There is even a French version.

On a slightly more serious note, I go through the recent history of the centre-right in Denmark and Sweden: The parties, the policies and the electoral impact. But I didn’t dare predict the result of the Swedish election.

Enjoy your reading.

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If we ask the experts (these days, political experts in the media are invariably “communications experts”), Fælleslisten’s chances of making it to the Folketing are negligible. The reason? There are two, according to our experts: The party (which strictly speaking does not exist yet) lacks a full political programme and a charismatic leader.

The political programme issue was the subject of a recent interview with Leif Hornshøj, the leader of Fælleslisten in its present form, on DR2′s Deadline. No, FL does not have a clear position on the Danish presence in Afghanistan, the party is sort of anti-federalist when it comes to the EU and we’ve learnt later that the position on the early retirement benefit is … both ways.

But can you make it to parliament with a purely negative programme?

As it is, it has happened a couple of times. Back in the 1940s and 1950s, the Justice Party (Retsforbundet) was relatively successful in a number of elections due to its free-market and (especially) anti-rationing message. Similarly, in the 1970s the Progress Party was against taxes and bureaucrats. The realism and political efficacy of both parties was more than questionable but under the right (or wrong) circumstances, their negative message attracted voters.

If you are curious about foreign policy, the Justice Party included both pacifists and pro-NATO members. This was potentially a big deal in the 1950s. Similarly, the Progress Party originally announced that the Danish defence should be replaced by an answering machine telling a potential invader that “we surrender”. People loved it.

Still, the Justice Party and the Progress Party thrived in situations where the conflict lines between the established parties were difficult to discern – at least on issues such as free trade (1950s) and taxes (1970s). That the Danish electorate since the 1930s has included a pool of 5-10 percent potential protest voters should also be considered. But FL’s best choice is probably to enter the ring with all guns blazing and concentrate on infrastructure and public services.

Then there is the issue of leadership. Ordinary parties can indulge in less than inspiring leaders (Bendt Bendtsen, anyone?) but a protest party definitively needs somebody who knows how to work the media. The Justice Party had Viggo Starcke and the Progress Party Mogens Glistrup, both gifted media manipulators. Starcke thanked people for letting him into their homes (via the radio), Glistrup enriched the Danish language with skrankepaver, papirnussere and whatnot. Judged from his performances on tv, Leif Hornshøj is neither a Starcke nor a Glistrup, so FL does have a problem here. The party, just like FOKUS (remember them? No not the Dutch rock group) isn’t ready for the big time in national media yet. I think that FL’s prospects would be better if the party could find a way to mobilise outside of national media – but we people from the centre tend to forget things like local radio which is a force to be reckoned with outside of the larger cities.

When it comes to the formation of new parties on a national level, I tend to be sceptical: The death rate is formidable and generally it takes extraordinary situations for a new party to succeed. That Ny Alliance made it to parliament in 2007 should be a warning sign for the established parties (even if LA has zero chance of attracting people outside of the financial districts in Denmark) as it reflected a lack of loyalty towards the government among its electorate.

I’m not really sure that we are in a time of major realignments, though, so my guess is that FL will find it very hard to succeed at the national level.

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Last week, Berlingske Tidende published a poll indicating that some 9 percent of voters might consider voting for a national equivalent of Fælleslisten – even if nobody has any idea about the specific policies of such a party. Strangely, Berlingske manages to argue that “Fælleslisten enjoys support everywhere” and “Danes do not believe in Fælleslisten” but this merely tells us what we already know: Newspaper headlines always, without exception, make too sweeping conclusions. The correct description is that a) Fælleslisten enjoys support outside and of North-Western Jutland and b) about a quarter of voters think that stopping the economic and administrative centralisation is a realistic option while about half of the voters think it is not a realistic option.

Unfortunately, Berlingske has not published the details of the poll on the web but the tables published in the print edition give us some extra information.

First, we should note that it is unlikely that FL would win 9-10 percent of the vote. Voters usually consider voting for more than one party – in the real world, some 4-5 percent would be a realistic target. (You might want to compare with the buzz surrounding Ny Alliance when it was formed three years ago). But that is still a respectable share of the vote which could make life uncomfortable for more than one of the established parties.

Second, the break-down of data shows some interesting distributions of the support.

The highest level of support comes from the 18-36 year-olds (16 percent), not the 60+ group (9 percent). On the other hand, we should remember that young voters generally are more fleeting in their preferences – FL is the new boy in town and we should expect that it attracted the interest of new voters. Still, calling FL a gathering of old people does not quite describe its potential, even if it would be nice to see this being broken down according to age, education and geography.

The distribution of potential FL supporters on parties is also of interest. That DF supporters are over-represented (11 percent) might not be a surprise, even if it does not quite fit the distribution according to age. But this could mean that DF will be more aggressive in pushing local projects in the coming parliamentary year. Conservatives, Social Liberals (well duh) and Liberals on the other hand look more immune to the direct challenge while FL could make some inroads among Social Democratic and Socialist voters. Again, we could expect the Social Democrats and Socialists to somehow rediscover the periphery.

But what about political leaders and programme?

To be continued

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So far, political reporting during the silly season this summer has been taken over by Fælleslisten, a party which has its roots in the north-western parts of Region Midtjylland and which was originally formed in protest to the decision by the regional council – and the government – to place a new hospital in Gødstrup near Herning instead of closer to Holstebro. After winning two seats in the regional council at the last local elections, the party now plans to extend its activities to all of Denmark – or more specifically, the parts left empty-handed by the centralisation of all kinds of public services. And now the questions are: A) Will they make it to parliament at the next national elections and B) What role would Fælleslisten have in national politics.

As always, political scientists are pathetic when it comes to predictions but I will take a chance and add my considerations.

First, the party was originally organised on a local issue and it is obviously very hard to move from being a local pressure group to a national party.

On the other hand, issues such as the closing of schools, vocational colleges, public libraries, police stations, council offices and hospitals have affected large parts of the country. Add the withdrawal of public transport outside of the larger towns which is now being implemented and we face a massive problem with large parts of the country being left out and feeling abandoned by … well, by whom? The politicians? Bureaucrats? Technocrats?

Here we may have the crucial weak point in the organisational and political reforms of local government and state authorities: Even if the organisational structures of the 1960s for many reasons had outlived themselves by the 1990s, the 2007 local government reform was essentially the work of bureaucrats and technocrats with the Liberal Party and the then Interior Minister and present Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen as the political front. And even worse: While the reforms promised cheaper and more efficient public services, the economic results have been limited and the promised improvements in the quality of public services hard to discern. The most visible result has been that the counters literally have been moved further away from citizens.

At the same time, the economic development has meant that while the metropolitan region around Copenhagen and the “100-kilometre-town” in Eastern Jutland¹ have seen growth and an influx of people, the rest of the country has seen stagnation with the appearance of the by now infamous “rotten banana” as the result. (Things are a bit more complicated as large parts of Zealand also belong to the banana, but we’ll use it as the iconic image for now).

To sum up: What we have is a potential centre-periphery conflict caused by a very uneven economic development as well as national politics becoming increasingly technocratic and centralised. The question is if Fælleslisten (or any other political party) will be able to mobilise voters and turn the latent conflict into an active one.

To be continued…

1. The – legally non-existent – “100-kilometre-town”, also known as “The Fat Sausage”, is the stretch along the East Jutland motorway from Randers via Århus, Horsens and Vejle to Fredericia and Kolding. It is also the best – or worst, if you wish – case of suburban sprawl in Denmark

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This year’s Almedalsvecka held some interest as it was the last major event before the campaign for the 2010 election really begins in late August. The former leader of the Left Party, Gudrun Schyman, who is trying to take Feminist Initiative into parliament for the second time made some kind of performance with potentially ironic effects.

For those into political parties, I should note that Statsvetenskaplig Tidsskrift published a special edition (pdf) covering changes in Swedish parties and held two seminars dealing with the left and right side of the spectrum, respectively.

All party leaders make a speech during the week, those where manuscripts or transcriptions have been published can be found here.

And the there was the Littorin Affair which as such had nothing to do with Almedalsveckan, except that it happened to be published during the week and more or less diverted media attention away from what else was happening. To make a long story short, the tabloid Aftonbladet alleged that the conservative labour market minister Sven Otto Littorin of buying sex from a prostitute in 2006, something which is illegal in Sweden but a crime which is prescribed after two years. As far as we know, the story is based only on the testimony of the woman, Littorin allegedly had sex with. Following the initial allegations (not made public initially), Littorin resigned citing a conflict with his ex-wife over the custody of their children and aggressive attempts by journalists to contact his family. After his resgination, Littorin has disappeared from the public eye but (indirectly) denies any wrongdoing. We have also been told that Littorin is involved in a custody fight with his ex-wife and that he has received some kind of treatment for depressive episodes earlier.

The story raises a number of tricky questions which are difficult the answer. My observations so far:

1. Aftonbladet’s behaviour was completely predictable. First, there were “allegations”, then the paper “considered” publishing the story and finally it published the interview with the woman in question. A typical strategy when news media wants to set the agenda while pretending only to be reporting. And sell copies for successive days. (Aftonbladet’s editor interviewed by Svenska Dagbladet)

2. Littorin and prime minister Fredrik Reinfeldt were in a lose-lose situation. Given the status (prescribed) of the alleged crime, there is no way police and courts will be taking up the case even if he has payed for sex. If Littorin did not buy sex from the woman in question, the only way he could clear his name would be through a civil libel case. An impossible situation for a government minister, especially in the run-up to an election.

3. Fredrik Reinfeldt’s handling of the case has been criticised for being unclear and lacking in empathy. What may be more important, the opposition Social Democrats have used the story to attack Reinfeldt. The scandal comes at an early time in the election campaign but given the surprisingly weak support for the opposition in recent polls, we should not rule out the possibility of a very dirty campaign. (More about Reinfeldt’s handling and the non-mentioning of the prostitution allegations)

4. Littorin has showed bad judgement before. In 2007 it emerged that he held an “MBA” from Fairfax University, a non-accredited university (and possibly a diploma mill) based in the US. The MBA was consequently removed from his resumé. His track record is a liability, regardless of which version of the story is true this time.

5. Littorin has claimed that he has been under treatment for a heart condition and depressions. I haven’t followed Swedish politics on a 24/7 basis for the past two years, but this has been under my radar and begs the question if a government minister can be seriously ill without the public being informed. Here the strategy of the former Norwegian prime minister Kjell Magne Bondevik after he suffered a depressive episode could stand as a model of good communication. That Littorin has suffered from stress symptoms following his divorce is not surprising, and fighting a custody battle in the media is probably not a very good idea, but I think the case can be made the the public should be informed about the cause in general terms if a government minister is incapacitated for a period of time.

6. Finally, the story is all the more embarrassing for the Conservative Party as the justice minister Beatrice Ask presented a rather strange proposal to send letters containing papers in cases involving prostitution in envelopes with conspicuous colours to the accused (before a possible sentencing). Even if the idea seems to have been thrown out, the Swedish Conservatives will find it hard to complain about the way media have treated Sven Otto Littorin.

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Historians and journalists have occasionally wondered why the Conservatives appear to be beset by regular feuds threatening to tear the party apart – the party was born with a dual identity and during the 1920s, the late 1940s, the early 1970s and finally the late 1990s it has lived through massive internal conflicts. Historian Søren Mørch has speculated that there must be some kind of link between the party’s problems in attracting and promoting competent policitians and the perpetual feuding.

One the one hand, the party has survived all of these earlier wars, on the other hand it is really, really hard to imagine potential successors to the present leadership this time.

The Conservative Party is not the only party to experience severe internal conflicts. In fact, conflicts between factions seem to be a regular feature in Danish politics with the Social Democrats as the major exception. Between the secession of the Communists in 1917 and the appearance of the anti-EEC faction in the early 1970s, the party was remarkably free of open internal conflicts.¹ Needless to say, the 1990s and to some degree the 2000s were decades of party disunity with two party chairmen being unseated (Svend Auken in 1992 and Poul Nyrup Rasmussen in 2002).

The Liberal Party similarly has seen internal conflicts, most notably in the 1930s when agrarian groups threatened to pull the party apart. 1935 was a low point in the party’s history but the improvement of agricultural trade helped the party leadership recover. Still, between 1933 and 1950 the Liberal leadership was in a more or less permanent state of flux with Knud Kristensen only providing a temporary solution before going down in flames over the South Schleswig issue. It was not until Erik Eriksen took office in 1950 that the party finally stabilised. What happens if (or rather: when) the party suffers a major loss in the coming election and the entire leadership will have to be replaced is another matter. But the lesson from the Social Democrats and the Liberals could be that a party can survive prolonged periods of internal conflicts and unstable leadership, given that the party has a working organisation.

If we look at the smaller² parties, the Social Liberals nearly imploded in 1920 and spent much of the decade being uncertain about their strategy. One faction wanted to move closer to the Liberals, another saw the party’s future as the partner of the Social Democrats. The latter strategy won following the 1929 election and the rest, as they say, is history.

Still, the question about the party’s place in the centre of Danish politics created new problems from the 1960s onward. The emphatic win in 1968 also laid the foundations for a vicious factional struggle continuing until the 1977 election when the party was close to extinction. Even if the party supported the Schlüter governments during most of the 1980s, it was only able to do so by performing a rather remarkable stunt where the left wing was being accommodated by the Social Liberals’ voting against the governments on issues such as environment, European policy and foreign and security policy. And there are signs that electoral wins are deadly for the Social Liberals as the intense feuding following the 2005 election indicates. During the last three years, the party has been losing MPs regularly, but the party leadership can hope that a rejuvenated parliamentary group placed firmly on the left side of the political divide will deliver peace and influence, if maybe not electoral prosperity.

Finally, there is the Socialist People’s Party which suffered its first major split in 1967 and descended into full-scale civil war in the early 1970s. It was only when Gert Petersen was made chairman that the party entered a stable phase and despite varying successes at the polls (1977-1987 was a period of gains, 1990-2005 a period of losses), SF has managed to steer clear of another deadly battle between factions for the past 40 years. A remarkable feat. One reason may be the ready availability of alternative left-wing parties.

1. The group called Socialdemokratisk Samfund which was active in the 1960s may be seen as precursor of the later factionalism
2. it may be slightly misleading to call SF a small party, but historically it has been the largest of the smaller parties in the Danish parliament.

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Alcohol is a different matter: I’ve lost count of the number of local and national politicians who have taken “time out” or resigned after being caught drink-driving during recent years. Given the Danes’ somewhat problematic drinking habits, this may or may not be surprising.

Sending your child to a private school is tricky, especially for Social Democrats who are supposed to support the public school system as a tool for social integration. Actually, given the level of housing segregation in Denmark, it is slightly surprising that the choice of school gets more attention than the choice of housing. But then again, Mette Frederiksen has never been known as being particularly quiet or subtle so she should have expected that she would have it coming at some point.

But the issue of schools and housing points to the fact that most Danish politicians whatever their party belong to the professional (slightly higher) middle classes. Their behaviour fits with the lifestyle of some 10-20 percent of the population but is more or less at odds with that of the majority of voters.

The Stephen Kinnock case can be seen as an extreme case of this professional middle class versus Ms. and Mr. Denmark cleavage. Mr. Kinnock – just in case you didn’t know – is more relevant to us as Mr. Helle Thorning-Schmidt, the husband of the leader of the Danish Social Democrats, and the two met when both attended the College of Europe in Bruges, one of the breeding grounds of the Euro-elite. Ms. Thorning-Schmidt made her career in the Euro-political sphere before entering Danish national politics, Mr. Kinnock his in the British Council and now in that most Social Democratic of places, the World Economic Forum.

Yep, the one in Davos, Switzerland. With the banks. And the bank accounts. And the place for the tax-dodgers of the world. (Actually, the Bahamas or the Cayman Islands are the places to watch but never mind: Switzerland has a brand issue here).

So an advisor worth his or her money would have pointed out that Mr. and Ms. Thorning-Schmidt might want to consider in advance that the information that Mr. Thorning-Schmidt pays his taxes in Switzerland while the family home is registered in the name of Ms. Thorning-Schmidt (thereby giving a full mortgage deduction) would make the news at some point.

Are they doing anything illegal? In all likelihood not. (Though mind you, I’m not a tax expert and I know from personal experience that having income from more than one country or working in one country and living in another can, no: will, make your economic life … complicated.)

Does the arrangement look like the Thorning-Schmidts are taking advantage of tax rules … well … of course, you would never consider making similar arrangements, would you?

Will Thorning-Schmidt and the Social Democrats be hit by the story? The actual damage may be much smaller than some hope. After all, the Conservatives look set for a summer of hate and the Liberals will be busy stopping the hemorrage of voters.

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It didn’t quite work in my case:

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(Don’t worry: It’s perfectly safe for work. Unless you are a German economist)

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