The Great Nordic Thread

[politicus]

If the yes-side wins the independence referendum Scotland will apply for membership of the Nordic Council according to an interview with SNP foreign policy spokesman Angus Robertson on NRK.

[politicus]

Why though? Did Salmond watch a few episodes of Borgen and just think that it seems like such a lovely place?

Scotland is part of the North Atlantic region and the Nordic model is also seen as attractive to many Scots. Such as the people in http://www.nordichorizons.org and http://reidfoundation.org/common-weal.

Its an idea that's been floating around for at least a couple of years.

http://nationalcollective.com/2013/06/10/exclusive-icelandic-prime-minister-ready-to-welcome-an-independent-scotland

http://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/viewpoint/as-others-see-us-the-view-from-denmark.2012059452

[politicus]

While I personally would be against more than observer status to Scotland because full membership would kill the linguistic dimension in the Nordic cooperation, there is an emotional foundation for this. Most Danes and Norwegians visiting or living in Scotland feels a sense of commonality - somehow Scotland feels close to us (and its not just rain, mountains and binge drinking ) and its my impression a lot of Scots feel the same way about Scandinavia.

Regarding Norwegians and Scots Norwegian author of Øyene i Vest (The Islands in the West) Kirsti Jareg put it this way: "There is a great commonality of character to the two peoples. A peculiar duality of vulnerability and robustness that each of them recognises in the other."

[politicus]

With a few days left before May 1. only 27% of Danish voters consider SD to be "a labour party",  43% disagree, while 30% are undecided. Just 46% of SD voters agree that it is a labour party.

36% consider Helle Thorning-Schmidt to be bourgeois (borgerlig) and only 29% view her as a Social Democrat, 30% answers neither and 5% don't know.

Meanwhile the DPP is polling at a record 22% and SD no. 2 Mette Frederiksen speaks as if she was already the new chairman. Still SD is above 20% for the first time since January, so congrats Helle...

[politicus]

A new right wing party has been started in Iceland by free church congregations and anti-homosexual/transgender activists. Its based on Christian values in the US Christian Right tradition. Generally the far right hasn't been very successful in Iceland, with the Right Greens flopping at the latest election with their blend of anti-immigration, low taxes and faux environmentalism, so it will be interesting to see if this works for them.

Kristin stjórnmálasamtök wants to ban gay marriage, get rid of the gender neutral marriage ritual and only allow abortions if the mothers health is in danger, forbid the use of surrogate moters + cut state funding for sex change operations and stop non-Christian immigration to Iceland.

On foreign policy they want to cut ties to the EU (which they see as a treat to Icelands independence) and China while strengthening Icelands relations to the US and try to join NAFTA. They want to change the constitution in order to ban the Althing from giving away Icelandic sovereignty or if that's not possible require 80% acceptance in a referendum for giving up sovereignty.

Several church leaders including a handful of prominent free church ministers have denounced the new party, calling it right wing extremist and intolerant.

[politicus]

At their party conference the Red Green Alliance in Denmark agreed on a new party program to replace the very long and very Marxist one they had, which has made it difficult to connect to new voter groups unfamiliar with left wing tradition and Marxist terminology.

The Red Greens have grown from 2.300 members to 10.000 since the last party program was agreed upon and many of the new members are also unfamiliar with Marxist terminology, so even internally this makes sense.

The old program mentioned revolution 29 times, the new one only once and in a context where its clear that they want to do it by democratic methods.

Also they are going from wanting communal ownership of all means of production to only wanting "fundamental changes to the economic structure".

A controversial paragraph about abolishing the police and replacing it with workers militias (in a hypothetical revolutionary situation) is also gone and they even back the military, all though only to be used in UN peace keeping operations.

So all in all. Moderate heroes! As a Trotskyist stated: The new programme tries to bridge from the left wing to the Liberals.

Party leadership has also been met with criticism for trying to weed out far left and controversial candidates for the next election.

Among them is Muslim convert Anna Rytter.

[politicus]

That's not a quote. Why did you make it as one?

[politicus]

The Red Green Alliance seem to now be fully fledged Democratic Socialists rather than Lenninists.

The old programme was also pro-democracy - if you bothered to read it properly (which nobody did). But it was a hotchpotch of strange and internally contradicting relics from the past with some weird hypothetical scenarios in which a future elected socialist government had to defend itself against reactionary counter revolutionaries by arming the workers - and the party leadership had to defend it time and again.

[politicus]

DF biggest party in a national poll for the first time ever. In a poll by YouGov for MetroExpress, DF is the biggest party. This is not very surprising days after they won the EP elections clearly and with the Liberals tormented by the expenses scandals of their leader, but nevertheless quite significant. No suprise that it's a YouGov poll either; they have consistenly been showing the highest DF results.

DF 23.9% 42 seats
Liberals 21.3% 38
Social Democrats 17.6% 31
Enhedslisten/Unity List 11.9% 21
Social Liberals 8.7% 15
Liberal Alliance 6.7% 12
SF 4.8% 9
Conservatives 4.2% 7
Christian Democrats 0.9% 0

Government + supporting parties = 76 seats
Opposition = 99 seats

With other polls showing the Social Democrats back ahead, would Helle risk a snap election at all?

No. This poll has Liberals + DF on 55,2% - and it might be right. An election now would be extremely risky.

[politicus]

DF biggest party in a national poll for the first time ever. In a poll by YouGov for MetroExpress, DF is the biggest party. This is not very surprising days after they won the EP elections clearly and with the Liberals tormented by the expenses scandals of their leader, but nevertheless quite significant. No suprise that it's a YouGov poll either; they have consistenly been showing the highest DF results.

DF 23.9% 42 seats
Liberals 21.3% 38
Social Democrats 17.6% 31
Enhedslisten/Unity List 11.9% 21
Social Liberals 8.7% 15
Liberal Alliance 6.7% 12
SF 4.8% 9
Conservatives 4.2% 7
Christian Democrats 0.9% 0

Government + supporting parties = 76 seats
Opposition = 99 seats

With a result like this, could Thulesen Dahl become Prime Minister, or is DF still controversial enough that Venstre would refuse to enter a coalition with them?

No. Allowing DF to lead a government would give them a chance to become the biggest party for a long time. Thulesen-Dahl is a capable and intelligent guy and might very well be succesful and the Prime Ministers party generally gains from its coalition partners. That would be very problematic for the Liberals.

And the Liberals and DF could never agree on an EU policy.

Regarding whether DF would be too controversial I think the Liberal leadership has crossed the Rubicon on that one some time ago (saying things like they have "a community of values" with DF etc.), but they would lose some of their more principled actual liberal members to Radikale Venstre or Liberal Alliance if they formed a government with DF.

[politicus]

I like the fact that conservative Christian have no place in Danish politics.

Somewhat true, since the Christian Democrats are not represented and the Conservatives are very secular.

All though there are two representatives of the right wing Lutheran Tidehverv movement in the DPP group and one of them - Christian Langballe - is a Minister.

[politicus]

I like the fact that conservative Christian have no place in Danish politics.

I think that it something most of the Scandinavian countries have in common. The Christian Democrats appeared in places like Italy and Germany because the traditional rightwing bourgeois parties had compromised by supporting fascists or Nazis, or simply by being associated with them. The same dynamics weren't in place in Norway, Sweden or Denmark.

Christian Democrats do not necessarily equal Christian Conservatives - especially in Scandinavia  and if you do actually make that equation DK, Norway, Sweden do have conservative Christian parties.

The German catholic party Zentrum, which was the main ancestor of CDU, dates back to the German Empire. CDU became bigger because of bourgeois parties incriminating themselves by collaborating with the Nazis, but Christian Democrats would have existed as a strong party anyway.

As mentioned earlier Christian conservatives do have a place in Danish politics, as an important segment in the DPP - as seen in the partys growing homophobia and opposition to gay marriage.

[politicus]

The problem with transferring he whole Christian democratic Party to Denmark and comparing the different Christian movement in DPP and CD (Christian Democrats)/CPP (Christian People Party) are several.

Traditional the fundamentalist and low church elements in Danish Lutheranism have connected with liberal and socialist parties.

As for CPP have only reached out to a relative small and specific segment in the Danish Lutheran movement; the crypto Calvinist "Indre Mission" (Internal Mission) who make up around 6-10 percent of the Danish population, and among this movement only a minority have supported CPP, most have traditional voted Venstre, but some found Venstre too right and anti-solidaric, but was not willing to vote on the "Godless" Social democrats. Historical these people voted for for the Social Liberals, but when pornography and abortion was made legal in the late 60ties, these people became aware, that the Social Liberals no longer represented their interest, and CPP was established. This are a quite different history from Christian Democrats outside Scandinavia.

The religious aspects in DPP have very little in common with this. First of all the priests in DPP belong to Tidehverv a very small and elitary ecclessial fraction in Danish Lutheranism, which build individualism, nationalist and the thoughts of Kierkegaard. Before their connection with DPP, Tidehverv was traditional split between a pro-Social Democratic fraction and a pro-Conservative fraction, with the latter fraction in the thirties flirting with fascism. While the priest from Tidehverv have delivered much of DPP's intellectualism it have never really reached down to the common voters, which if they're religious at all are more likely to identify with the very liberal but somewhat nationalist Grundtvigianism.
So what Tidehverv have delivered to DPP are not voters, but an intellectual ballast, which the party needed.

While a few members of Inner Mission may have voted for the Social Liberals its members voted quite heavily for the old conservative party Højre (the Right) in the 19th century and after the turn of the century drifted towards the Liberals, representing their rural interests.

Inner Mission is pietistic, but I wouldn't call them crypto-Calvinist.

Anyway, the two most classical Christian Right types in the DPP parliamentary group come from Inner Mission. Its the couple Mikkel Dencker and Mette Hjermind Dencker.

As family policy spokesperson she is responsible for most of the party's anti-gay rhetoric linking gay marriage to people marrying dogs and goats, something their deputy chairman Søren Espersen called "figurative speech".

Ms. Dencker has also claimed that single parents, homosexuals, divorcees and children leaving home before they are 18 are unnatural.

As a sample on her rhetoric from November 2013:

”Do people whose life partner is of the same sex exist? Do people who live alone with their children exist? Do children who have never met their father, because they are created with insemination exist? Do children living together with multiple adults exist? The answer to all those questions is YES! It exists in todays Denmark. Is it natural? No! No matter how recognized, widespread and normal it will be, it will never be natural to live in a way that is against the order of nature”.

Espersens remark about Russian discrimination of gays as "that little gay thing" and DPP critique of Crown Prince Frederick (who is an IOC member) for criticizing Russia's discrimination of gays in connection with the Sochi Olympics is also part of the party's new anti-gay rhetoric.


On Tidehverv

I have posted on Tidehverv earlier and I think we more or less agree on this strange movement.

I would just like to add the characteristic of Tidehverv and their rhetoric from the poet, priest and national resistance icon Kaj Munk (murdered by the Germans in 1944):

"God is everything, I am nothing and you are an idiot!". That is basically how those guys still debate.

EDIT: While Tidehverv are not conservative Christians in the usual sense they do share many Christian Right positions and Tidehverv nestor Søren Krarup did say that "gay people are handicapped" during the gay marriage debate.

[politicus]

Generally I prefer the labels Christian Democrats and Christian Right to Christian Conservatives when debating this topic. Christian Democracy is fundamentally a form of conservatism, but many Christian Democrats have policy positions on economics and environmental issues that are to the left of conservatives because our conservatism is based on different issues.

Of the Christian parties in Scandinavia only the new and very small "The Christian Party" in Iceland is Christian Right in the US sense. The others are more or less centrists with the Danish as the most left wing and the Swedish as the most right wing.

They are also of different age:

Norway 1933, Finland 1958, Sweden 1964 and Denmark 1970.
 

[politicus]

Anthropologist and MP in the Folketing Sara Olsvig (35) is  the new chairman for Greenlands main opposition part IA after a narrow 37-35 victory over temporary chairman Aqqaluaq B. Egede. Olsvig now leaves the Folketing. Her election is a victory of the Nuuk based well educated segment over the settlements.

[politicus]

Danish Liberal leader and centre-right Prime Minister candidate Lars Løkke Rasmussen is scheduled to meet with his party's Executive Committee on Tuesday for a vote of confidence on his continued leadership after the expense scandal. But a growing number of local associations - especially in Jutland - and politicians demand his resignation. Observers think it will be difficult for Løkke to get the 70-75% support they think is necessary for him to continue as chairman with any authority and predict he will step down before the meeting - rather than face the humiliation of a defeat or a razor thin victory.

[politicus]

You must be logged in to read this quote.

http://www.dr.dk/Nyheder/Andre_sprog/English/2014/06/02/130923.htm

Lol at DR for translating hovedbestyrelse to central comitee!

[politicus]

According to political editor at the Danish newspaper Politiken Mette Østergaard Liberal leader Lars Løkke Rasmussen will withdraw as chairman after tonight's meeting in the party's main board. That was to be expected, but she also says that he will support former Minister of Defence Søren Gade as chairman instead of Deputy Chairman Kristian Jensen, whom Løkke has totally sidelined and consider a nerd. Jensen is more in touch with the party's rural and Grundtvigian roots (mum and dad were free school teachers, he does gymnastics in his spare time and his wife is scouting instructor etc.) and has the support of the Liberal core areas in Mid- and Western Jutland, but goes by the name Kristian Kedelig (Boring) and is not well liked in the capital area.

Gade is Chairiman of the organization Ariculture and Foods after he had to withdraw as Minister of Defence after the Jægerbog-scandal (a former Danish special force member giving away supposedly confident info in a book) and is set to testify before an investigative commission later this year. But apparently he has assured Løkke that there will no problems in that regard.

He is a likable, empathetic guy, who is able to connect well with "ordinary people" and a much better communicator than Jensen.

Østergaard cites a source very close to Løkke and she is normally very well informed.

EDIT: Well, this time she wasn't!

[politicus]

Very interesting poll. I didn't expect to see the Social Democrats do so well, or Venstre do so badly.

If Danish Peoples Party actually became bigger than Venstre in a real election, how would that change the dynamics on the Danish right?

Actually it may lead to a situation in which DPP is no longer to the right, but somewhere in the middle - perhaps as the main rival to the Liberals. The problem for DPP in this scenario is that they would have no allies, but that could change in the next 10-12 years with a new generation of SDs taking over.

Another interesting question is how much DPP will and can moderate on immigration policy in order to be perceived as more moderate.

In a new Epinion poll from DR they are actually the biggest party.

SD 21,4%
 

Social Liberals 7,3%



Conservatives 5,8%



SPP 7,2%



Liberal Alliance 5,4%



Christian Democrats 0,3%



DPP 23,8%



Liberals 20,1%



Red Green Alliance 8,7%

[politicus]

After a more than 7 hour marathon meeting in the Liberals main board Party Chairman Lars Løkke Rasmussen survived the challenge from his critics, and stays on as leader. His opponents failed to get the necessary votes to call an extraordinary congress.

This is really good news for SD and Helle Thorning-Schmidt and might give her unpopular government a chance to survive.

[politicus]

After a more than 7 hour marathon meeting in the Liberals main board Party Chairman Lars Løkke Rasmussen survived the challenge from his critics, and stays on as leader. His opponents failed to get the necessary votes to call an extraordinary congress.

This is really good news for SD and Helle Thorning-Schmidt and might give her unpopular government a chance to survive.

Wow! I was really getting the impression he was doomed.

So was virtually everybody else. But I suppose the lack of faith in Kristian Jensens leadership abilities and the manoeuvre of bringing Søren Gade in as a potential challenger to Jensen did the trick. Even if it would have been rather odd for them to have a chairman who isn't in the Folketing a competitive election between Gade and Jensen would either have meant a Gade victory or Jensen winning with such a slim margin that his position would have been untenable from day one. Apparently Jensen and most of his supporters didn't want to risk that.

Still, some things have been said that cant be withdrawn.  The Liberals in Viborg in central Jutland made a statement saying that Løkke Rasmussen was "not the sort of man you would want to invite into your house", and I can see the SD campaign people making posters with "Would you invite this man into your house?" with a picture of Christiansborg Castle, as it is the house of parliament.

[politicus]

Very interesting poll. I didn't expect to see the Social Democrats do so well, or Venstre do so badly.

If Danish Peoples Party actually became bigger than Venstre in a real election, how would that change the dynamics on the Danish right?

I have no idea and if someone say they do, they're wrong.

DPP are between two point, the untouchable and the mainstream, last time such a party became the biggest was the SocDem in the early part of the century. So there are little precedence for how the voters and the Right will react to DPP being biggest. I doubt the Right would give DPP the PM position, on the other hand if DPP are the biggest party, it would look weird, as avoidance of responsibility (from DPP side) and as an insult (from the other party in government) if they didn't became part of the government.

It might not be such a big transition after all.

I have heard that the DPP isn't that far to the right in terms of economic and social policy. In the respect that they support the Danish welfare state, and accepts the need for high tax rates to fund these social programs (Their sister party in Norway is far more ambivalent on this point. They want the welfare state, but not the tax rates that are needed to pay for it). On these issues they should be able to find a lot of common ground with the Social Democrats.

The DPP obviously differs from other parties (maybe especially on the left) on immigration policy. But is this all that controversial today? The impression from Norway is that DPP and Fogh Rasmussen largely won these battles in the early 2000s.

Well, I tried to at least partially answer this above: https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=150978.msg4184279#msg4184279

DPP is basically centrists on economics, but they are right wingers on immigration, law and order, education and culture and euro-sceptics. The party is also anti-green and they have a Christian Right type spokesperson on family policies.

Regarding cooperation with SD:

DPP is increasingly seen as a partner for the left on welfare issues and social policies, and on law and order the difference to SD isn't that great

It is not possible to tighten immigration policies in DK without breaking international conventions, which no other party than DPP is willing to. The only area that can be tightened is access to citizenship. In reality DPP leadership has accepted this, but the party faithfull obviously wants more and since immigration is the raison de etre for DPP they have to keep pushing for more. Since SD has accepted the core of the centre-rights immigration policy the de facto immigration policy is not what blocks a cooperation with SD. But DPPs rhetoric and official policy on immigration and their lack of focus on integration of minorities already in Denmark is a problem for SD,

As mentioned earlier the general view in DK is that it will take a new SD leader generation (= at least 10-12 years) before DPP and SD will be able to cooperate. And DPP will have to moderate on non-economic issues, perhaps with the exception of law and order. They would also basically have to accept status quo on immigration as government policy and tone down their rhetoric (which they have already done -  but they may need to tone it down even more).

DPP could probably fairly easily moderate on environmental issues, but the rest might be harder.

[politicus]

First Danish poll (from Gallup) after Lars Løkkes survival is quite good for the Liberals - all things considered. Its a Liberal-SD tie with DPP not far behind, but it looks like their Euro-wave might be declining.

The government and left wing is at 46,1% combined, while the centre-right is at 52,6% (or 53,3% if you include the Christian Democrats).

Its the first poll in a very long time where SF/SPP is above the Red-Greens. Actually SF is now only 1,1% below the election result. If SF survives the "getting into government and out again"-experience without losing voters this will be a major triumph for new SF-leader Pia Olsen Dyhr.

Conservatives and Liberal Alliance have been unable to profit from the Liberal crisis, which shows just how far the Conservatives are from their previous status as one of the two big centre-right parties. Since there is virtually no ideological difference between Cons and Libs these days, it should have been possible for them to capture at least 2-3 percentage points of critical Liberal voters.


SD: 22,4%

Social Liberals: 8,7%

Conservatives: 5,5%

SPP: 7,9%

Liberal Alliance 4,3%

Christian Democrats 0,7%

DPP: 20,9%

Liberals : 21,9%

Red-Greens: 7,1%

[politicus]

First Danish poll (from Gallup) after Lars Løkkes survival is quite good for the Liberals - all things considered. Its a Liberal-SD tie with DPP not far behind, but it looks like their Euro-wave might be declining.

The government and left wing is at 46,1% combined, while the centre-right is at 52,6% (or 53,3% if you include the Christian Democrats).

Its the first poll in a very long time where SF/SPP is above the Red-Greens. Actually SF is now only 1,1% below the election result. If SF survives the "getting into government and out again"-experience without losing voters this will be a major triumph for new SF-leader Pia Olsen Dyhr.

Conservatives and Liberal Alliance have been unable to profit from the Liberal crisis, which shows just how far the Conservatives are from their previous status as one of the two big centre-right parties. Since there is virtually no ideological difference between Cons and Libs these days, it should have been possible for them to capture at least 2-3 percentage points of critical Liberal voters.


SD: 22,4%

Social Liberals: 8,7%

Conservatives: 5,5%

SPP: 7,9%

Liberal Alliance 4,3%

Christian Democrats 0,7%

DPP: 20,9%

Liberals : 21,9%

Red-Greens: 7,1%

Where would you place Liberal Alliance? Isn't this the most right-wing party economically, despite having (some of) its "roots" in Radikale Venstre? Are LA interested in joining a centre-right govt after the next election?

LA is clearly the most economically right wing party. They don't want to join a government, since they prefer to influence it from the outside and stay ideologically pure.

A Liberal one party government is what everybody expects. Since the Liberals don't want DPP as partners (and DPP don't want to join, thinking they get more influence outside - citing the SF-experience). And Løkke has stated that he sees no point in including any of the small parties.

[politicus]

New MMR poll has the Icelandic Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugssons Progress Party at a mere 9,5%, the lowest since april 2009.
Bright Future is getting closer to the lead with 21,8%, clearly ahead of SDA with 16,5%.

Government: 34,5%

IP 25%
PP 9,5%


Opposition: 58%

BF 21,8%
SDA 16,5%
LG 11,4%
Pirates 8,3%