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Politics Round-Up: Red and blue blocs level pegging with kingmakers waiting in the wings

Ben Hamilton
August 3rd, 2022


This article is more than 2 years old.

The red bloc and blue blocs are level pegging in the polls with 47.9 and 47.8 percent of the vote, according to the latest Epinion poll.

Certainly, the odds of Mette Frederiksen remaining prime minister after the next election have been lengthened to 5/6 by prominent bookmaker William Hill.

Konservative leader Søren Pape Poulsen has been shortened to 9/4 to replace her, while Venstre chair Jakob Ellemann-Jensen remains more or less the same in the betting at 11/4.

Potential kingmakers aplenty
Lars Løkke Rasmussen, the leader of new party Moderaterne, has still not indicated who he will support with his party’s 3.1 percent of the vote.

Inger Støjberg’s new party Danmarksdemokraterne (10.8) could also throw in a curveball, as could Radikale (5.8).

Denmark’s largest printing firms have again confirmed there is heavy demand for posters given the possibility of a general election taking place in the autumn


Vegan party all at sea after De Grønne and Alternativet turn down merger offer
De Grønne and Alternativet have turned down an offer from Veganerpartiet to merge their parties and call themselves Grøn Alliance. Recent polls suggest Veganerpartiet would only win 0.3 percent of the vote in a general election, De Grønne 1.6 percent and Alternativet 1.0 percent. Over 2.0 percent is needed to obtain representation in Parliament. Party leader Henrik Vindfeldt concedes the name of the party “could seem exclusionary” to others. In September 2020, Veganerpartiet quickly gathered the 20,000+ voter declarations needed to take part in a general election, but since then support has dwindled and the party has suffered from prolonged internal conflict.

Former minister wants his seat back
Christian Friis Bach, a former minister with Radikale, has announced his intention to run for Parliament in the next election in the constituency of Hjørring. Bach was the development minister from 2011 to 2013 under Helle Thorning-Schmidt. In recent years, he has been concentrating on running the company Warfair, which imports goods from conflict zones.

Mette’s pension gold continues to deliver
Since 1 August 2021, it has been possible to apply for the right to an early pension via borger.dk. As of June 30, the authorities can confirm that 53,300 people in Denmark have applied and 39,900 have been approved. The scheme, which many consider to be one of PM Mette Frederiksen’s biggest triumphs in office, enables people in physically demanding jobs to retire three years earlier than normal – so from the age of 61.


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A survey carried out by Megafon for TV2 has found that 71 percent of parents have handed over children to daycare in spite of them being sick.

Moreover, 21 percent of those surveyed admitted to medicating their kids with paracetamol, such as Panodil, before sending them to school.

The FOLA parents’ organisation is shocked by the findings.

“I think it is absolutely crazy. It simply cannot be that a child goes to school sick and plays with lots of other children. Then we are faced with the fact that they will infect the whole institution,” said FOLA chair Signe Nielsen.

Pill pushers
At the Børnehuset daycare institution in Silkeborg a meeting was called where parents were implored not to bring their sick children to school.

At Børnehuset there are fears that parents prefer to pack their kids off with a pill without informing teachers.

“We occasionally have children who that they have had a pill for breakfast,” said headteacher Susanne Bødker. “You might think that it is a Panodil more than a vitamin pill, if it is a child who has just been sick, for example.”

Parents sick and tired
Parents, when confronted, often cite pressure at work as a reason for not being able to stay at home with their children.

Many declare that they simply cannot take another day off, as they are afraid of being fired.

Allan Randrup Thomsen, a professor of virology at KU, has heavily criticised the parents’ actions, describing the current situation as a “vicious circle”.

“It promotes the spread of viruses, and it adds momentum to a cycle where parents are pressured by high levels of sick-leave. If they then choose to send the children to daycare while they are still recovering, they keep the epidemic going in daycares, and this in turn puts a greater burden on the parents.”