Social Democrats cling on to power in Denmark

Denmark’s centre-left will retain a slim majority in parliament after a general election widely regarded as a confidence vote in the nation’s leader.

Following a “nail-biting count”, the Social Democrats are clinging to power after taking 28% of votes, said Politico, paving the way for another term for the incumbent prime minister, Mette Frederiksen.

Her bloc won precisely the 90 seats needed for a majority, thanks to three mandates from Greenland and the Faroe Islands. “Social democracy had its best election in over 20 years,” Frederiksen said in a speech during her election-night party in the capital, Copenhagen.

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However, noted the BBC, she wants to form a “broader coalition” and has tendered the government’s resignation to the queen.

Frederiksen was originally forced to call an early election in October amid an outcry over her government’s handling of a country-wide mink cull at fur farms during the Covid pandemic. A report found that the government’s order to kill up to 17 million mink in 2020 had no legal basis.

Danish politics has previously “stuck strictly to separate left- and right-wing blocs that have taken turns in governing”, said the Financial Times, but Frederiksen has said she would like to see a centrist government involving the main parties from both the left and right, to minimise the influence of extremist parties.

Nevertheless, said New Statesman, a “close election and a shifting political landscape isn’t likely to change the country’s anti-immigration policies” because “there is a broad anti-immigration consensus in Danish politics”, including from Frederiksen, who declared in 2019 that she wanted her country to accept “zero” asylum seekers.

Writing for Al Jazeera, Somdeep Sen said “a range of anti-immigrant and anti-asylum laws” and an “increasingly xenophobic political discourse” have made him feel “unwelcome” in Denmark.