On the morning of 3 June, one could see a red flag fluttering as the new government stepped forward in the square before Amalienborg Palace. At the insistence of Lars Løkke, the flag had been fitted with a purple border, but no one could see it while it fluttered in the wind.
After the media and commentators had spent a couple of days praising Mette Frederiksen for her statesmanship, it has now dawned on the nation that the statesmanship consisted of organising a political buffet for the Socialist People’s Party (SF), the Social Liberal Party (Radikale) and the Red-Green Alliance (Enhedslisten), which were able to help themselves as they pleased. Admittedly, the Moderates (Moderaterne) obtained optical relief in income tax, which was nevertheless offset by tax increases elsewhere. What Lars Løkke placed in your hand, Pelle Dragsted immediately took back. CEPOS was able soberly to observe that the overall tax burden for most citizens has increased under this government platform.
The light-blue parties are furious and direct their anger at Lars Løkke, without reflecting that since 2001, when Anders Fogh Rasmussen assumed governmental power, they themselves have borne responsibility for Denmark having now become a paternalistic society (formyndersamfund), a liberal-socialist state.
In the liberal-socialist society, companies and citizens enjoy complete freedom to earn as much money as they wish. That is the liberal part. And the state enjoys complete freedom to confiscate precisely as much of the money of citizens and businesses as it requires for the “community”. That is the socialist part. In 2010, Finance Minister Claus Hjorth Frederiksen (V) appeared in the media boasting that “never has the public sector been larger, never have there been more public employees!”.
When we have received a bright-red government programme that increases the power of the state and restricts the freedom of citizens, this is not a malicious manoeuvre on Mette Frederiksen’s part, but the result of many years of government leadership over the centre, which has step by step moved to the left. The centre of Danish politics therefore now lies where SF is situated. That is why agriculture has been thrown under the bus, the tax burden has been increased and the financing of the accelerating green transition is being placed upon taxpayers.
The new government is sending agriculture to a lodging house. The objective is that Danish pig production should be limited to the domestic market. The cultivation of feed crops will then cease, since there will be fewer animals. Production is to be converted to organic legumes, which the government apparently believes should constitute the future evening meal of the Danes. The green transition to renewable energy is being put into overdrive in the form of an offensive expansion of offshore wind power in the Baltic Sea and the North Sea. Naturally with state subsidies, just as the state will subsidise “cheap, green energy” for businesses. The registration tax on electric cars is to be abolished, and the taxes on petrol and diesel cars increased in order to facilitate the transition to exclusively green transport. Taxpayers are footing the entire bill for the green feast and will have something to work on over the next four years.
We are, however, promised compensation in the form of reduced value-added tax on foodstuffs and no value-added tax on fruit and vegetables. Unfortunately, this reform has been placed in the hands of the Ministry of Taxation (Skatteministeriet), where all the IT systems lie in ruins. It was SKAT that was responsible for Sanjay Shah being able to siphon billions of kroner from the state treasury, SKAT had to scrap the EFI system that was intended to collect tax debts, and it is SKAT that has created the erroneous property valuations that are driving homeowners to distraction throughout the country. Tax experts from the university sector have told the media that SKAT’s chances of launching an altered VAT system in 2030 belong in the government’s department for jokes and entertainment. SKAT is IT-dead and cannot be revived before 2030.
The media rejoiced at the promise of free dental treatment for everyone. It was stated that the scheme would be introduced next year for pensioners and the chronically ill, and then expanded to further groups of recipients in the years ahead, so that everyone would be covered by 2030. It now transpires, however, that initially only recipients of disability pension (førtidspensionister) will be eligible to receive free dental treatment.
Both the Red-Green Alliance (Enhedslisten) and the Social Liberal Party (De Radikale) are popular among migrants from Islamic cultural societies. The Red-Green Alliance is closely aligned with the Palestine movement and does not like Israel. Within the Social Liberal Party, Samira Nawa does what she can to advance the cause of Islam. Both parties depend upon their many Muslim votes and have expressed their gratitude by giving the gift of free dental care not to pensioners, but specifically to recipients of disability pension. It is, after all, a well-known fact that immigrants from Islamic cultural societies dominate the allocation of disability pensions, which they regard as better suited to a devout Muslim than the labour market. They have now received something in return for their votes, and the Red-Green Alliance and the Social Liberal Party deliver votes that function. At the same time, the new government has ensured that the “strict immigration policy” means that the MENAPT countries may regard Denmark as a point of entry without points of exit.
The government programme is financed in the same manner as the “super hospitals”. That is to say, a budget proposal without control and without fixed form. The large sums of money intended to cover the state’s sharply increased expenditure are expected to be raised through a higher tax burden affecting income, inheritance, the sale of housing and probably later also increased taxation of pension assets. This fits very well with what the majority of voters desire: a social-democratic society with a strong state, central control, high taxation intended to provide high welfare, and dominant state media telling us what we are to think about Trump, the climate, the green transition, evil Israel and our solidaristic community.
With the new government, dawn is breaking, folks. It is lighting up in the east of the Danish Democratic Republic. Albeit with a royal house. So what more can we ask for?