nelson
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Post by nelson on Jul 3, 2022 14:26:41 GMT
Frederiksen has given a non-answer when questioned about the election, she just said that she "of course listens" to her support parties (as parties providing confidence-and-supply are known as). But I don't see what possible advantage it would give her to force a motion of no confidence. There has only ever been three in Denmark (1909, 1947 and 1975) and it would be an unnecessary humiliation, so presumably she's just waiting for the right moment (given that summer elections are unpopular with voters). Radikale Venstre can't back down, they'd lose all credibility, and a lot of their membership and a string of councillors and ex-MPs wanted them to back a legal inquiry so demanding an election was already the soft solution.
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nelson
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Post by nelson on Jul 3, 2022 15:17:39 GMT
Unsurprisingly the leaders of the Liberals and Conservatives have said they'll make the Mink Commission's report the main theme of the election campaign and demand a legal inquiry of the PM's actions.
All Blue Bloc part apart from the Christian Democrats (who remain undecided) support letting an independent law firm conduct an inquiry into Frederiksen's handling of the affair and open a Realm Court case if the inquiry find grounds for doing so, in addition to the centre-right/right the Free Greens also support an inquiry.
IMO Frederiksen's best hope is that the voters tire of the whole thing and the campaign quickly turns into a normal issue based one. Trying to make it a referendum on her handling of the pandemic, as some SocDems seem tempted to, will most likely backfire.
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Post by Devil Wincarnate on Jul 3, 2022 18:19:27 GMT
Probably Socialist People's Party, maybe Red Green? The Socialist People's Party officially call themselves Green Left in English, as of March this year. A reference to the Green Left in the Netherlands perhaps, or just a rebrand?
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Post by Devil Wincarnate on Jul 3, 2022 19:47:22 GMT
There has been a fatal shooting at Denmark's second-largest shopping mall this afternoon, Fields in Orestad.
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Post by aargauer on Jul 3, 2022 20:22:53 GMT
Probably Socialist People's Party, maybe Red Green? The Socialist People's Party officially call themselves Green Left in English, as of March this year. A reference to the Green Left in the Netherlands perhaps, or just a rebrand? They should merge with Red Green and call themselves Red Green Green Left. They could have a splinter Green Left Red Green group and start screaming at each other in traditional far left fashion.
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jamie
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Post by jamie on Jul 3, 2022 20:37:38 GMT
They should merge with Red Green and call themselves Red Green Green Left. They could have a splinter Green Left Red Green group and start screaming at each other in tradition far left fashion. Fun fact, the SPP splintered from the Communist Party of Denmark in 1959. They then had their own splinter when the Left Socialists branched off in 1967. The latter joined with the other far left parties, including the Communist Party of Denmark which they originally split off from, to form the Red Green Alliance. Even more bizarre is the Liberal splits. Radikale Venstre (Social Liberals) split off from the Liberals. The green Alternative split off from them, and the Muslim interests Free Greens did from the latter. Therefore, the Free Greens are technically an offshoot of the Liberals! The Free Greens also share the same gene pool (Radikale Venstre) as the Liberal Alliance!
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nelson
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Post by nelson on Jul 3, 2022 20:59:15 GMT
Probably Socialist People's Party, maybe Red Green? The Socialist People's Party officially call themselves Green Left in English, as of March this year. A reference to the Green Left in the Netherlands perhaps, or just a rebrand? They are part of the European Green Party and wanted a name that signaled they're both Green and leftist and didn't sound like a ruling party in one of the Communist turned state capitalist one-party states. It's originally a Eurocommunist breakaway from the Danish Communist Party after it split in a small Moscow loyalist wing and a bigger pro-democratic wing (which included its chairman) after Hungary '56, but then mostly got taken over by New Left types in the late 60s and 70s with the Communists keeping the working class vote and trade union contacts. But people's party was just intended to signal they were now "good democrats", similar to how the old The Right picked the Conservative People's Party as their new name after they'd finally accepted universal suffrage and parliamentarianism in 1915 and needed to rebrand. The term people (folk) has historically had very positive connotations in Denmark with the established church being "the people's church", the public school being "the people's school" and public libraries "people's libraries" etc., but nowadays some on the left see it as too ethnic. The party has been split in a Green wing and a Red wing since the late 60's, although the difference between them is smaller than it used to be (in a British context it would be like if Caroline Lucas and Angela Rayner were in the same party), and it's fairly similar to a lot of Green parties in Europe. The alternative proposal Socialist Greens was defeated at the party conference as was Danish Green Left. I generally find special "international" party names in English that aren't either direct translations or at least reflect the meaning of the real name annoying so I kept the old one. E.g. Radikale Venstre (litt. The Radical Left) should be the Radical Liberals rather than the vapid Social Liberals because the party grew out of fairly generic 19th century radical liberalism and the term Left just meant Liberals (with The Right being the Conservatives).
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nelson
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Post by nelson on Jul 4, 2022 11:23:11 GMT
There has been a fatal shooting at Denmark's second-largest shopping mall this afternoon, Fields in Orestad. It doesn't look like this has potential to become relevant for the election. The shooter was an ethnic Dane, he was clearly mentally ill and well-known by the psychiatric system and while he may have expressed far right sympathies they weren't particularly coherent and his victims weren't Muslims. He killed two Danish teenagers and a middle aged Russian man, and the half a dozen wounded also seem to be a random collection of Danish and Swedish shoppers with an overrepresentation of teenagers. To become electorally relevant it would have had to be either an Islamist (or at least a mentally ill Muslim shouting Allahu Akbar) killing Danes or a far right terrorist killing Muslims. Anything else doesn't really have the potency to remain on the media agenda for months. That psychiatric treatment isn't good enough and that far too many fall through the cracks of the system is more or less a consensus position in Danish politics, but the reasons why the system isn't working properly are structural and the centre-right opposition share responsibility, so it's not really a good campaign theme for anyone (and right now the Blue Bloc is gearing up for a Mink scandal/government overreach focused referendum on Frederiksen anyway).
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Post by John Chanin on Jul 4, 2022 12:53:50 GMT
i find it hard to believe that a massacre of minks will have any significant resonance with the Danish electorate.
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Post by finsobruce on Jul 4, 2022 13:15:27 GMT
Liberal Alliance. Sadly unable to vote for my fellow vegans. Free vegans right wing splinter anyone? Just you I suspect mate
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Post by finsobruce on Jul 4, 2022 13:19:02 GMT
i find it hard to believe that a massacre of minks will have any significant resonance with the Danish electorate. Mark Oaten (remember him) has issued a statement on behalf of the Fur Federation...
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jamie
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Post by jamie on Jul 4, 2022 13:45:54 GMT
i find it hard to believe that a massacre of minks will have any significant resonance with the Danish electorate. The issue is mostly not about the ending of the industry, but rather whether the Social Democrats and top civil servants acted truthfully and lawfully. The report says that Mette Frederiksen acted unlawfully and misled the public, but she appears to have believed she was acting lawfully and telling the truth (the minks spread Covid, she was told killing them was legal, she therefore supported doing so). It is less balanced towards others including the former food minister (already sacked), the head of the police, the permanent secretaries of the justice and food departments, and importantly Frederiksen’s personal permanent secretary, who they argue should be fired and potentially prosecuted. Frederiksen has said her permanent secretary has her continued support. so as with any scandal it taints the governing party by association (and they are guilty of unknowingly acting unlawfully), but they have also been slow and defensive about investigating issues and sacking people which hurts them further. Still, the Red Bloc is ahead in the polls, including one done in the immediate aftermath, and the opposition is very diverse which means a small amount of lost support due to the mink scandal isn’t necessarily fatal.
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nelson
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Post by nelson on Jul 4, 2022 14:45:04 GMT
i find it hard to believe that a massacre of minks will have any significant resonance with the Danish electorate. Well, it's about the government and top civil servants, police chiefs etc. ignoring legal procedures and intimidating farmers (using soldiers as back-up and letting police officers paint an untrue picture of the legal situation) not the minks per se, and Frederiksen's government already has a reputation of being "power arrogant" as we say in Danish, so there'll be some resonance. There is also another scandal where top people in the Military Intelligence (incl. its commander) have been suspended for apparently illegally handing over information to the Americans (but officially it has never been revealed what the whole things is about) where the government wanted to charge former Minister of Defence and Liberal éminence grise Claus Hjort Frederiksen but a majority in parliament, incl. the Red Greens, refused to suspend Frederiksen's parliamentary immunity because the government wouldn't tell them what exactly he was charged with. And various corruption scandals about public procurement (incl. in the police) so there is a general view that standards are being undermined and the government is abusing its power, and that the top level of the central administration has been thoroughly politicized. E.g. one Head of Department (with a law degree) told the Mink commission that "legality had not been top of his mind" when discussing the mink culling. Of course it's a delicate balance and need to be done carefully, but there is definitely a feasible campaign theme exploiting the feeling that "there's something rotten in the state of Denmark and it's mainly the SocDems fault". Frederiksen has been an unusually hands-on PM and first through her Chief of Staff Martin Rossen (a previously unknown title that de facto made him an unelected Deputy PM) and then after he left for the private sector her unusually politically involved Head of Department (Permanent Secretary) in the Ministry of State Barbara B. Bertelsen (ofc known as 3B) who is viewed by many to have bullied resort ministers into ignoring legality, procedure, expert evaluations etc. It's a government where the Minister of Defence said publicly that she viewed the Chief of Defence as comparable to a Head of Directorate in the Central Administration (which obviously pissed of everyone in the military and she was eventually removed). Secondly, most of the Danish industry and agriculture is located in Jutland, and the animosity between the so-called "Production Denmark", the places that actually make and sell tangible products, and the service sector and administration dominated Capital Region with a third of the population runs quite deep. The narrative that the wealth of Denmark is created in Jutland (or the provincial towns and countryside in general) and spent in Copenhagen on exorbitant wages and frivolous projects by out of touch academics, bureaucrats, do-goooders and pseudo-artists has lots of electoral appeal, and part of Frederiksen's political project was to rebrand the SocDems as having returned to their roots as a party for the working class and ordinary people, and to promise to remedy the imbalance between the capital/large cities and the rest of the country. The swing vote in Danish elections is the provincial working class/lower middle class which vote either Liberal, SocDem or DPP (or at least used to) and consider the other parties as elitist middle class parties that are not for them. Frederiksen won last time by winning over enough of that group while shedding highly educated urban voters and public sector employees to the rest of the centre-left (a deliberate strategy). Her government is unusually working class with more than half the ministers having at least one parent who had a manual job and very few Copenhageners (and no upper middle class people from the Capital region for the first time ever in a Danish government). Her home region of Northern Jutland was the core region for mink production. This group of swing voters care a lot about jobs, and don't like busybodies, bureaucrats and activists from Copenhagen shutting down businesses in "Production Denmark", they may accept shutting down mink production for public health reasons, but if it can be argued the government did it to appease its "elitist" confidence-and-supply partners that's another matter. They are not particularly economically right wing and are willing to vote SocDem if the party pursue sufficiently tough law & order and immigration/integration policies, but they dislike the left wing and the Social Liberals (seen as the parties of out of touch academics and the creative class).
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Post by finsobruce on Jul 4, 2022 15:04:54 GMT
i find it hard to believe that a massacre of minks will have any significant resonance with the Danish electorate. Well, it's about the government and top civil servants, police chiefs etc. ignoring legal procedures and intimidating farmers (using soldiers as back-up and letting police officers paint an untrue picture of the legal situation) not the minks per se, and Frederiksen's government already has a reputation of being "power arrogant" as we say in Danish, so there'll be some resonance. There is also another scandal where top people in the Military Intelligence (incl. it's chief officer) have been suspended for apparently illegally handing over information to the Americans (but officially it has never been revealed what the whole things is about) where the government wanted to charge former Minister of Defence and liberal eminence gris Claus Hjort Frederiksen but parliament, incl. the Red Greens, refused to suspend Frederiksen's parliamentary immunity because the government wouldn't tell them what exactly he was charged with. And various corruption scandals about public procurement (incl. in the police) so there is a general view that standards are being undermined and the government is abusing its power, and that the top level of the central administration has been thoroughly politicized. One Head of Department (with a law degree) told the commission that "legality had not been top of his mind" when discussing the mink culling. Of course it's a delicate balance and need to be done carefully, but there is definitely a feasible campaign theme exploiting that feeling. Frederiksen has been an unusually hands-on PM and first through her Chief of Staff Martin Rossen (who de acto acted as an unelected Deputy PM) and then her unusually politically involved Head of Department (Permanent Secretary) in the Ministry of State Barbara B. Bertelsen (ofc known as 3B) have bullied resort ministers into ignoring legality, procedure, expert evaluations etc.. It's a government where the Minister of Defence said publicly that she viewed the Chief of Defence as comparable to a Head of Directorate in the Central Administration (which obviously pissed of everyone in the military and she was eventually removed). Secondly, most of the Danish industry and agriculture is in Jutland, and the animosity between the so-called "Production Denmark", the places that actually make and sell tangible products, and the service sector dominated Capital Region with a third of the population runs quite deep. The narrative that the wealth of Denmark is created in Jutland (or the provincial towns and countryside in general) and spent in Copenhagen on exorbitant wages and frivolous projects by out of touch academics, bureaucrats, do-goooders and pseudo-artists has lots of electoral appeal, and part of Frederiksen's political project was to rebrand the SocDems as having returned to its roots as a party for the working class and ordinary people, and to promise to remedy the imbalance between the capital/large cities and the rest of the country. The swing vote in Danish elections is provincial working class/lower middle class which vote either Liberal, SocDem or DPP (or at least used to) and consider the other parties as elitist middle class parties that are not for them. Frederiksen won last time by winning over enough of that group while shedding highly educated urban voters and public sector employees to the rest of the centre-left (a deliberate strategy). Her government is unusually working class with more half the ministers having at least one parent who had a manual job and very few Copenhageners (and no upper middle class people from the Capital Area for the first time ever in a Danish government). Her home region of Northern Jutland was the core region for mink production. This group of swing voters care a lot about jobs, and don't like busybodies, bureaucrats and activists from Copenhagen shutting down businesses in "Production Denmark", they may accept shutting down mink production for public health reasons, but if it can be argued the government did it to appeased it's "elitist" confidence and supply partners that's another matter. They are not particularly economically right wing and are willing to vote SocDem if the party pursue sufficiently tough law & order and immigration/integration policies, but they dislike the left wing and the Social Liberals (seen as the party of out of touch academics and creative class). A very useful summary, thanks.
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nelson
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Post by nelson on Jul 4, 2022 19:22:38 GMT
The Denmark Democrats sent the necessary signatures to the Ministry of the Interior on 1 July and are now waiting for them to be verified, but that should be a formality. The first Voxmeter poll fully conducted after Støjberg launched her new party has "Other parties" at 10.1%, 90-95% of which is likely support for DD (Others were at 0.4% in the last poll conducted fully before the launch of DD).
It has DPP dropping from 4.3% in the previous poll to. 2.2%, the lowest ever in a Voxmeter poll and barely above the threshold, Støjberg's old party the Liberals drop from I5.2% to 13.6% in the previous poll, but they were at 17.2% in the last poll fully conducted before DD was launched.
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nelson
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Post by nelson on Jul 4, 2022 21:58:41 GMT
The new Voxmeter poll with changes from the last poll that was fully conducted before the launch of the Denmark Democrats (one month ago).
Others 10.1 (+9.7)
New Right 4.3 (-1.5) DPP 2.2 (-2.7) Liberal Alliance 3.0 (-1.4) Conservatives 12.3 (-1.3) Liberals 13.6 (-3.6) Christian Democrats 0.8 (-0.1)
Moderates 2.2 (+0.7) Social Liberals 6.9 (+0.3)
SocDems 25.8 (-0.5) SPP 9.1 (-0.3) Red Greens 7.6 (+0.3)
The Alternative 1.5 (+0.7) Vegans 0.0 (nc) Free Greens 0.6 (+0.3)
Just one poll ofc, but DD seem to get their votes from across the right and not just from the two right wing populist parties, but the Conservatives are the least affected proportionally (which makes sense, their voters are mainly highly educated and/or wealthy city dwellers and suburbanites), would be surprising if they attract a substantial number of voters directly from LA, but LA has gained some support in rural areas so not impossible. SocDems basically unaffected by the Mink report, but that doesn't necessarily mean it can't be weaponized against them if the Blue Bloc can connect it to the right narrative.
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nelson
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Post by nelson on Jul 5, 2022 16:36:11 GMT
There has been a fatal shooting at Denmark's second-largest shopping mall this afternoon, Fields in Orestad. It doesn't look like this has potential to become relevant for the election. The shooter was an ethnic Dane, he was clearly mentally ill and well-known by the psychiatric system and while he may have expressed far right sympathies they weren't particularly coherent and his victims weren't Muslims. He killed two Danish teenagers and a middle aged Russian man, and the half a dozen wounded also seem to be a random collection of Danish and Swedish shoppers with an overrepresentation of teenagers. (...) This seem to be fake news (or more charitable: unintentionally confusing him with someone else, but a lot of it was from "professional antiracist activists" citing dubious foreign sources on social media so not sure one should give them the benefit of the doubt). He was a gun club member and had stolen the weapons he used from the club, so perhaps there's a theme about gun club responsibilities & safety precautions, but that's consensus stuff. He also called a helpline shortly before the shooting, which was closed, so just depressing and meaningless all around. The New Right (not the ones I'd have guessed..) have used it to campaign for better and more comprehensive psychiatric healthcare. They like to pick select welfare issues to give them a soft/humane image (like the public job centers forcing chronically ill people on benefits to be endlessly tested for "remaining job ability" rather than just getting a disability pension), and they're fairly good at it so maybe I shouldn't have been surprised.
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nelson
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Post by nelson on Jul 8, 2022 7:44:52 GMT
The Denmark Democrats have picked the letter Æ as their party letter, which will appear on the ballot. It's the only available letter that has never been used by any political party.
On the one hand it's a bit surprising because it's a somewhat clunky letter, but on the other hand it might be sensible to pick one with no associations to other parties and Æ does have some advantages. It's perceived as a very Danish letter as one of the three (Æ, Ø, Å) that aren't part of the standard Latin alphabet and has been in Danish since roman letters were introduced in the 1100s so it fits the patriotic party name; the words for honesty, honour, venerable and genuine all start with æ so it has positive associations; and it puts the party near the bottom of the ballot, which is generally considered better than being in the middle.
Certain letters are not available. L and T are reserved for local elections, L for lokalliste (local list) and T for tværpolitisk liste (cross-political list), S is permanently reserved for the German minority's party Slesvigsk Parti and N is used by the People's Movement against the EU in European elections, W is unavailable because it's traditionally considered a variation of V rather than a "proper" letter, and X because that's how you're supposed to mark your ballot and shouldn't be associated with a single party.
Of the nine currently available letters: E, H, J, P, R, U, Y, Z and Æ Støjberg has avoided those associated with the far right, nationalism and right wing populism: Z for the old xenophobic and libertarian Progress Party (from which the DPP is a breakaway) which last ran in 2001, R for Danish Unity (which still exists, but hasn't run in a national election since 1964) and P which was allocated to far right Hard Line until they lost ballot access in 2021.
Y was once the iconic symbol of the Left Socialists (they used to have posters were the Y was a slingshot firing against the capitalists) and briefly used by New Alliance the more centrist predecessor of Liberal Alliance 2007-08, and along with Z one of the best remembered minor party letters, so probably sensible to avoid that one.
J has only been used by the eurosceptic June Movement for European elections, but since Støjberg doesn't want a Daxit that might have been an unwanted association.
H has only been used by the small lefty new age inspired Humanist Party 1987-90, and has a positive association to the words for honesty/decency and honourable, but since humanist has become immigration hardliner jargon for a naive open borders do-gooder, that was probably never an option.
E was traditionally used by the Justice League, a small Georgist party that was in parliament 1926-1960 and for most of the 70s, and then again by businessman and convicted felon Klaus Riskær Pedersen during his brief venture into politics in 2019. It would have gotten them the highest available spot on the ballot, but I suppose Riskær using it not long ago made it unappealing, since both are one-(wo-)man parties led by a charismatic but glib convicted person.
The most obvious pick and the one I'd have thought she'd went with is U, which is both a more aesthetically pleasing letter than Æ and was used by former Liberal PM Knud Kristensen's right wing splinter party The Independents in 1953 and 1968 (another strong-willed nationalist Jutlander with a "salt of the earth" image who fell out with the party establishment), and since only briefly used by a small moderate leftist party called Democratic Renewal in 1998, so not tainted in any way and with positive associations to independence (uafhængighed) and indomitability (ukuelighed), character traits associated with Støjberg.
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nelson
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Post by nelson on Jul 8, 2022 13:51:01 GMT
Megafon poll with the Denmark Democrats as a specific option has them at 10.8% and DPP below the threshold. Changes from the previous election in parenthesis.
New Right 4.2 (+1.8) DPP 1.7 (-7.0) Denmark Democrats 10.8 (new)
Liberal Alliance 5.2 (+2.9) Conservatives 13.4 (+6.8) Liberals 13.1 (-10.3)
Moderates 3.6 (new) Christian Democrats 0.5 (-1.2) Social Liberals 6.9 (-1.7)
Social Democrats 21.7 (-4.2) SPP 9.3 (+1.6) Red Greens 8.3 (+1.3)
The Alternative 0.7 (-2.3) Vegans 0.3 (new) Free Greens 0.1 (new)
Others 0.2 (-2.5)
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ilerda
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Post by ilerda on Jul 8, 2022 14:46:54 GMT
Sorry if I’ve missed it, but who/what exactly are the Denmark Democrats?
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