Voters in Denmark went to the polls a month in the past, on 1 November.
As the outcomes got here in it was clear incumbent Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen had pulled off one thing of a shock consequence: not solely had been her Social Democrats the most important single occasion however, due to MPs in Greenland, a left-leaning bloc of events managed a majority of seats within the Danish parliament.
From the skin, it appeared forming a brand new authorities could be easy.
But that is not confirmed to be the case.
With a really slim majority of only one, the left-bloc events realised they must agree on each single place, all the time, with no room for any rogue MPs going off-script and voting towards the federal government line.
So pretty early within the course of, two events dropped out: Red-Greens and The Alternative.
“The whole project around having a left-of-centre government with Social Democrats leading, that is out now and the main reason for that is the fragility of such a set-up,” defined Ditte Brasso Sørensen, a senior fellow at Think Tank Europa in Copenhagen.
As political luck would have it, Mette Frederiksen campaigned on a promise that she would attain out throughout the aisle and attempt to kind a authorities with events from the correct aspect of the spectrum.
“On election night when it dawned on everyone quite late that left-wing parties would have a majority, a lot of commentators wondered if Frederiksen would go back on her promise of forming a left-leaning government. But now she has the upper hand and she can hold firm in the negotiations, saying ‘this is what I promised during the campaign’,” mentioned Brasso Sørensen.
So who’s prone to be within the subsequent authorities?
Denmark hasn’t had a red-blue authorities that spans the political aisle for the reason that Nineteen Seventies, and meaning negotiations on kind it are continuing if not cautiously, however actually at a slower tempo.
“It’s new in a historical sense, but also because there are new parties. And obviously, it takes time because the parties at the negotiating table are still far away from each other,” mentioned Think Tank Europe’s Ditte Brasso Sørensen.
Venstre is the most important legacy occasion concerned in talks to kind the subsequent Danish authorities and though they went into an election vowing to not serve in a authorities fashioned throughout the political aisle — and definitely not with Mette Frederiksen as prime minister — their very weak displaying within the voting, dropping 20 seats, means they’ve needed to recover from these objections fairly shortly.
“It would have been impossible for Venstre to enter into concrete negotiations about a government before they had an internal discussion, so everyone was waiting for them to seek a mandate from their own party to do that, and they got it at a party conference last week,” mentioned Brasso Sørensen.
One potential permutation for a brand new authorities might embody the Social Democrats, with Venstre, the Socialist People’s Party, and the Social Liberal Party.
Add to this combine the Danish Moderates, a brand new occasion led by an previous identify in Danish politics which picked up 14 seats in November’s vote.
Their chief is former Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen, who beforehand headed Venstre.
And he is a giant political persona to deal with.
“Løkke Rasmussen has a mandate and power in these negotiations. But I think everyone will be quite cautious of what it would mean to be in a government with him, but where he’s not the prime minister,” defined Brasso Sørensen.
“It could be tricky in terms of government cohesion.”
