Danish elections bring shift to the right

AFTER four years of a government that leans to the left, the Danish people have tipped the scales in favour of the right.
The Danish general election held on Thursday June 18, saw the centre-right group, led by ex-PM Lars Lokke Rasmussen, beat the centre-left coalition government of Helle Thorning-Schmidt.
As the votes of the 85.8 per cent turnout rolled in, the right-wing Danish People’s Party (DPP) leader Kristian Thulesen Dahl (pictured) was jubilant.
In an electoral system a little different to that of the UK or Spain, and given that coalitions are accepted as the norm in any winning government, the 10 different parties show an allegiance to either the left or the right – red block or blue block – as depicted on the TV swing-o-meters.
In this case, Kristian Thulesen Dahl’s DPP, which could be viewed as the Danish equivalent of the British UKIP party, gave his support to the blue leader Mr Rasmussen and his conservative-liberal party.
The unusual twist in this election was that Thulesen Dahl’s DPP won so many votes, and in turn seats, his party is now the second largest in Denmark, securing an even larger part of the national vote than Rasmussen, who he supports. As a result, Mr Dahl could yet be in a position to make a bid to become prime minister.
In defeat, Ms Thorning-Schmidt said she was proud to have led the Social Democratic Party to the highest percentage of the vote with 21.1 per cent, adding: “We lost at the finish line.”