History of the Present (fortnight ending 30 March 2024)
Let’s go Danish
'There's a fantastic new TV show you must watch', Chris Patten admonished me some years ago.
'What's it about?'
'Danish coalition politics!'
From this unlikely beginning followed hours of pleasure watching successive series of 'Borgen', the Netflix series featuring Denmark's fictional first female prime minister, Birgitte Nyborg. In reality, the country's first female prime minister was Helle Thorning-Schmidt, a forceful Social Democrat who took office in 2011, soon after the first series was launched. Life imitating art - but the art also drew from life.
Since then, I've been to the real-life Borgen, aka the Christiansborg Palace in the centre of Copenhagen, three times. Remarkably, perhaps uniquely – any other examples, please let me know – it houses the the country's parliament, the government and supreme court. For good measure, it also has a grand suite of royal apartments, used for receptions and the like.
The first time, thanks to my good friend Lykke Friis, co-chair of the European Council on Foreign Relations, I had dinner with a bunch of politicians in the parliamentary restaurant. I asked one of them how realistic the TV show was.
'Very realistic.' Pause. 'Except for the murders.'
The second time, again thanks to Lykke, I had lunch with another group of politicians in Borgen. Then Martin Lidegaard, leader of the Social Liberal party and a former foreign minister, gave me a guided tour of the parliamentary part of the palace. He and his colleagues described a politics not unlike those in the series: intimate, combative but ultimately consensual. Private lives, he said, were almost entirely off-limits, and the media generally respected that (unlike in Britain or the US). Of course these things are easier in a small country with less than 6 million people – but I can think of quite a few small countries where it's not the case at all.
Martin also described how much the Danish parliament, the Folketing, had changed since he first entered it in 2001. Back then, the parliamentary club room was still like an old-fashioned smoking room, full of formally dressed white men of a certain age drinking beer or wine and smoking cigars or cigarettes – very much as in the oil paintings from the late 19th century that adorn the walls. Now the whole ambience is modern, informal and diverse. Many women. People with migration backgrounds. Hardly a tie in sight.
Martin's whistlestop tour ended at the corridor that connects the parliamentary part of Borgen to the prime minister's office – very much as seen in the TV 'Borgen', although the series was actually filmed elsewhere.
A few weeks ago, I finally had the pleasure of seeing that corridor from the other end, when I visited the latest incarnation of Birgitte Nyborg, prime minister Mette Frederiksen, in her large, handsome second-floor office, with the elegance of Scandinavian design inside and a beautiful view of Copenhagen at dusk through its high windows.
I wasn't there from idle curiosity. I was there because Denmark, under her leadership, has been in the front line of European support for Ukraine. As I already recorded in this newsletter, her New Year's Message was inspiringly direct about what more we need to do: 'Europe has not delivered what is needed…The war in Ukraine is also a war for the Europe we know’. At the Munich Security Conference, I heard her say 'we are giving our entire artillery to Ukraine'. Denmark has also sent the embattled country desperately needed F-16 fighters. It is rapidly boosting its defence spending to meet the NATO target of 2% of GDP. Turn off
Now her government plans to extend conscription to women from 2026, and lengthen the period of military service from 4 to 11 months. Perhaps most impressively, last year Danish lawmakers voted to abolish a springtime public holiday to help pay for the increased defence outlay. All this under a Social Democrat prime minister.
Our conversation was not for publication, but I can say that she was as clear and determined in private as she is in public.
This is a major turnaround for Denmark. One date I kept hearing on my recent visits to Denmark was… 1864. That was when Denmark was decisively defeated by forces of the German Confederation and had to give up Schleswig-Holstein. The point being made was that Denmark had not taken a forward role in the use of military power since that crushing 1864 defeat. (Yes, history matters.)
During the Cold War, I was told, Denmark did its bit in NATO, but nothing more. After the end of the Cold War, it not only took the 'peace dividend' as eagerly as other West European countries. It has also had a pacifist and anti-American left. But since 24 February 2022, the country has turned decisively. There's no equivalent of the German Social Democrat Rolf Mützenich here, no leading politician making a confused, shortsighted and selfish case for 'peace' in Ukraine on the basis of conceding victory to Vladimir Putin.
Whence this Danish clarity and unity?
Is it because of the country's geostrategic situation as the gateway to the Baltic Sea, with the Danish island of Bornholm, off the south coast of Sweden, a prime naval asset and target? Its fellow Scandinavian countries, Norway, Sweden and Finland, also take defence seriously. Sweden and Finland have joined NATO in response to Putin's aggression. Norway and Sweden are the only other European countries to require women to do military service.
Is it because of Denmark's experience during the Second World War? One senior policymaker suggested to me that there might even be an element of historical shame about the way Denmark tried to appease Nazi Germany. But perhaps also of pride in its history of resistance, and the way most of the country’s Jews were helped to escape in small boats across the sea to Sweden.
There may be some truth in all these hypotheses, and there are probably other explanations I've missed. But when I discussed this with one well-informed Danish observer, he said: 'That's all too complicated. The key to understanding this change is the leadership given by the prime minister.'
If only Mette Frederiksen were Chancellor of Germany.
Buy the new paperback of HOMELANDS, with an updated chapter on the war in Ukraine:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Homelands-Personal-History-Updated-Chapter/dp/152992507X
or if you prefer it in Danish:
Paul Keating “the only reason you build up political capital is so you can burn it getting important stuff done”
Someone should share that quote with Scholz
It will still need a bit more Zeit, do not forget that Scholz party, the once very proud SPD, doesn’t have strength nor will to exit Schröder the not only Putinversteher but appolgist and all the rest of club.