Dear all on the Scandinavian Politics list,
A happy new year to you all.
And the good news with which to kick off 2009 is that Danish party politics is as entertaining and fascinating as ever. The following account of this week's events was written mainly by Flemming Juul Christiansen of Aarhus University, with contributions from Jacob Christensen, now based at the University of Southern Denmark, and me.
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On Monday the leader and co-founder of New Alliance, Naser Khader, left his own party.
This originally centrist party was founded only 18 months ago. Its founding members were Khader and Anders Samuelsen, who both left the Social Liberal Party, and Gitte Seeberg, who left the Conservatives; two Liberals soon joined, too. At first the new party attracted broad support, up to 18 per cent. But after a mismanaged election campaign, it barely managed to cross the two percent threshold in the November 2007 election, and entered parliament with just five seats. Soon after, the party began to fall apart, with several MPs leaving the party, Gitte Seeberg among them. At one point, only Naser Khader and Anders Samuelsen were left, but they later they got a third seat when Seeberg resigned her parliamentary seat. The party restarted its party organisation, and later it changed its name to Liberal Alliance, with a new political programme that stressed traditional economic liberalism (especially low taxes).
In his resignation statement, Khader argued that Liberal Alliance had become to "liberalist" instead of "liberal". But it appeared that, had he not quit, Khader would have been unseated as party leader, with Samuelsen taking over. Liberal Alliance retains the right to run for the next election but it is not thought to have much chance of winning seats, even though the party now has a clear leadership – Samuelsen - and a pretty clear political programme. What you can say is that his Alliance is a record-breaker in Danish politics - losing its name, platform and four out of five MPs (including two of the party's three founders) in little over a year.
There is speculation that Khader may at some point join the Liberals or Conservatives. He has pledged, however, that he won't be forming any new parties - not least because, as he rather endearingly acknowledged, he isn't a very good party leader.
But there's more. Also on Monday, another former Social Liberal member, Simon Emil Amnitzbøll, took the initiative to form a new party, "Borgerligt centrum" ("Bourgeois Centre" is a direct rather unsatisfactory translation; note that the party itself doesn't offer any translation of its name). Its website (borgerligtcentrum.dk), which went live today, declares it to be "a new centre right party founded on liberal and humanistic values". Unlike Khader, Amnitzbøll was elected with very few personal votes. The new party will need to collect signatures to run for the next election, and this may turn out to be hard.
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Nick Aylott.
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Dr Nicholas Aylott, senior lecturer (docent) in political science
School of Social Sciences, Södertörn University, Stockholm
SE-141 89 Huddinge, Sweden
www.sh.se/samhallsvetenskaper
