Danish election: political stability is crumbling

The 24 March general election was nothing short of a disaster for the political centre and liberal democracy. In the 2022 general election, the SVM government, a coalition of the Social Democrats, Venstre, and the Moderates, secured a combined 50.1 percent of the vote. In this election, their overall support fell to 39.6 percent: evidence of a historically unpopular government.

[Originally published in Danish at marxist.dk]

Venstre (Denmark’s main bourgeois party) achieved the worst election result in the party’s history, with a meagre 10.1 percent of the vote. It only just managed to retain its title as the largest centre-right party. The Moderates also saw a decline compared to the 2022 general election, in which the party stood for the first time.

Mette Frederiksen is trying to downplay the Social Democrats’ dismal election result. But with just 21.8 percent of the vote (down from 27.5 percent in 2023), it stands as the election’s biggest loser. It is difficult to view the result as anything other than a protest against the policies that have been pursued by Christiansborg (the seat of the Danish government) for years.

Social Democrats’ disastrous election

The Social Democrats lost 5.7 percentage points, their worst election result since 1903. In every single constituency in the country, the Social Democrats lost ground. For the first time ever in a general election, the Social Democrats were not the largest party in the Greater Copenhagen Constituency – they were beaten by the Red-Green Alliance. Mette Frederiksen also personally received almost 32 percent fewer votes than in the last election.

In the run up to the election, the Social Democratic leadership attempted to appeal to workers and young people with mildly left-wing proposals: on wealth tax, clean drinking water, smaller class sizes in primary schools and improvements to the Arne pension (early retirement) scheme. But instead of appearing progressive, the Social Democrats’ attempt to present themselves as left-wing flopped completely.

The Social Democrats’ proposal for a wealth tax was initially popular and was eagerly taken up by the Red-Green Alliance. The problem with the proposal was that it became a technical discussion. They could not respond to the right-wing’s arguments because, fundamentally, they agree with the same capitalist logic.

All the proposals put forward by Mette Frederiksen and the rest of the Social Democratic leadership came far too late to appear credible. Mette Frederiksen has been in power for seven years and has thus had ample opportunity to implement her policies. In short, there is no trust in her.

The disastrous general election marks a new milestone in the crisis of the Social Democrats and yet another step towards the end of its role as the major, stable party in Danish politics. There are no other parties in the Danish parliament that can be regarded as ‘major’ in the traditional sense.

The disastrous general election marks a new milestone in the crisis of the Social Democrats / Image: News Øresund, Johan Wessman

This will make it harder for the ruling class in Denmark to govern going forward. The Social Democrats are an essential pillar of Danish capitalism, which is now more discredited than ever before. The election illustrates that the erosion of the political centre has reached a new level, and that the crisis of Danish democracy is deepening.

Polarisation

Apart from the collapse of the political centre, this election shows that polarisation in Danish society has reached a qualitatively new level. According to Kasper Møller Hansen, an election researcher at the University of Copenhagen, the votes “have simply shifted from the centre towards the wings, and that is pretty much the story of the election”.

For the first time ever, the established parties (the Social Democrats, Venstre, the Radicals and the Conservatives) collectively received less than 50 percent of the vote. On the left, both the Socialist People’s Party (SF) and the Red-Green Alliance (Enhedslisten) made gains. Although Alternativet lost 0.7 percent, the election result was, overall, the best ever for the parties to the left of the Social Democrats. However, this does not mean that the election was characterised by any great enthusiasm for either SF or the Red-Green Alliance: many voted for these parties primarily in the hope that they might act as a counterweight against the most extreme, racist policies coming from Christiansborg.

The Red-Green Alliance gained 1.2 percentage points in this election, securing 6.3 percent of the vote. However, the result is still below their performance in the 2019 parliamentary election and can therefore hardly be regarded as a genuine victory. 

SF gained 3.3 percentage points and is now the second-largest party in the Danish parliament, the Folketing. The SF’s growing support was primarily driven by the fact that they were simply not the Social Democrats.

Although some parties made slight gains – and though the right-wing populist Citizens’ Party just managed to clear the electoral threshold – there was only one party that actually had any real momentum. With a gain of 6.5 percentage points, the Danish People’s Party (DF) was the election’s standout performer. DF has emerged as the fiercest opposition to the SVM government. In the months leading up to the election, DF leader Morten Messerschmidt focused on the issue of high food prices, and during the election campaign he focused on petrol prices; two issues that workers, young people and the poor feel particularly keenly and are concerned about.

The picture painted by the election result is thus one of the political centre collapsing. Yet there is really no party there to channel that anger and dissatisfaction, because there is no genuine opposition to the political establishment.

For most people, therefore, the election was primarily characterised by a rejection of the status quo, rather than a positive endorsement of any particular party or their policies. And with a voter turnout of just 84 percent, the lowest in 36 years, many have completely rejected all parties, which are rightly seen as being much of a muchness.

They are all the same

Shortly after the election was called, TV2 broadcast a programme in which all the party leaders spent 24 hours together at a college. In the cosy surroundings, all the sharp edges and disagreements apparently vanished into thin air.

Whilst more and more workers, youth and poor people are struggling to make ends meet, the programme revealed that politicians live in a cosy bubble. They are not opponents representing conflicting interests, but first and foremost ‘good colleagues’. The feeling that there is a yawning chasm between politicians and the vast majority of the population has scarcely ever been more widespread.

An article in Weekendavisen aptly put into words the feeling many people have:

“The upcoming election can thus hardly be portrayed as a genuine political contest involving conflicting views of society. It perhaps resembles more a choice between individuals who, with their career plans in the public eye, are vying for a number of attractive administrative leadership positions. In Danish politics, there is a prevailing consensus. Dissatisfaction often stems from hierarchies and career prospects – or the lack thereof.”

In reality, only marginal nuances distinguish the parties. The difference between them is so small that they could practically all be in the same party. This is clearly reflected in the way they vote – all nine opposition parties voted with the government in between 71 and 94 percent of cases. Regardless of who you vote for, you get practically the same policies.

The fact that there is no real opposition in Danish politics becomes particularly clear on the issue of rearmament, which they all support. Even the Red-Green Alliance now supports raising defence spending to 5 percent of GDP. Despite there being 12 parties in the Danish parliament, if you oppose rearmament and the militarisation of society, there is no party to vote for.

Ideological vacuum

There is a complete ideological vacuum at Christiansborg. There are no parties – including the Red-Green Alliance – putting forward any grand vision for society that inspires or arouses enthusiasm.

Pelle Dragsted’s entire project has been to pull the Social Democrats to the left, but it has been a failure / Image: News Øresund, Wikimedia Commons

For years, the Red-Green Alliance has been drawn ever deeper into parliamentary games and the logic of supporting the Social Democrats as the ‘lesser evil’. People cannot stand Mette Frederiksen and the Social Democrats, and in precisely this situation, the Red-Green Alliance and Pelle Dragsted have tied themselves completely and utterly to them.

Pelle Dragsted’s entire project has been to pull the Social Democrats to the left, but it has been a failure. Instead of Pelle Dragsted pulling the Social Democrats to the left, the Red-Green Alliance has been pulled far towards the political centre.

In the election, the Red-Green Alliance did not put forward a clear socialist policy or present itself as anything different from the other parties. On the contrary, they have tried to downplay their own stances and adapt their policies to what the Social Democrats can accept.

During the election, the Red-Green Alliance launched the ‘world’s richest country’ campaign, which echoed the same praise of Danish capitalism as the other parties. On the issue of racism, the party also made significant concessions. Instead of exposing how the Social Democrats and the bourgeois parties use racism and the ‘bogeyman’ of crime to divide the working class, Pelle Dragsted perpetuates the same racist scaremongering about immigrants as the rest of the establishment. In interviews, he has spoken of how “the gangs that come and commit pickpocketing” must be deported.

On its current course, the Red-Green Alliance is increasingly seen as no alternative to the status quo. They have failed to connect with the anger and frustration that exists amongst a broad section of the population, particularly young people.

A new crisis and a new weak government

Mette Frederiksen ended her speech on election night by saying that Denmark needs a “stable government and a competent government”. But the opposite will be the case.

The last vestige of stability in Danish politics is disappearing. Instead, a picture is emerging of a Danish parliament consisting of myriad small, weak parties. The two main pillars of the ruling class in Danish politics – the Social Democrats and Venstre – have been significantly weakened. With the exception of the Social Democrats, the entire parliament is fragmented into 12 small parties with between 2 and 12 percent support. Political commentators have already begun to speak of the danger of a Belgian-style situation, where it takes half a year or even a whole year just to form a government.

The election result must therefore be a cause for concern for the ruling class, as it comes at a time when global capitalism is teetering on the brink of a serious economic crisis. Looming in the background of the election campaign was the war in the Middle East, soaring energy prices, and the downturn in global stock markets.

However, this has been reflected only to a minimal extent in the election campaign. But it can no longer be ignored. In the press, one can read various experts warning that the global economy is heading towards a serious crisis. The National Bank is warning that inflation could rise to 4.5 percent this year.

To survive in the intensifying competition on the global market, the bourgeoisie needs serious reforms to be implemented – in other words, attacks on the working class. But this will be difficult to achieve with a weak government. The previous SVM government had set itself the task of implementing far-reaching reforms, but it failed to do so. The new government, whatever form it takes, will need to implement even more drastic reforms, but they will find it even harder to carry them out.

The election is over. For most people, this is a relief, because after four weeks of election campaigning, they are thoroughly fed up with Christiansborg politics. But if we want a decent future for ourselves and our children, we cannot leave politics to the political representatives of the ruling class.

The election shows that, more than ever before, there is a need for an opposition to all of them. We need a revolutionary party with a vision of a completely different society. A society without billionaires, without imperialist wars, without racist divide-and-rule policies; where children can receive a proper education and where people do not have to work themselves to death.

If you share this vision, you should join the Revolutionary Communist Party.