David Leonhardt has written a detailed article for the New York Times arguing that the Danish Social Democrats and their leader, Mette Frederiksen, could be a model for the center left throughout Europe and North America: “Over the past several years, there is arguably not a single high-income country where a center-left party has managed to enact progressive policies and win re-election — with the exception of Denmark.”
Leonhardt goes on to argue that Frederiksen’s party won the political space to carry out those measures by adopting a more restrictive immigration policy. The Danish experience deserves careful analysis in its own right, but I want to take issue here with the wider premise of what Leonhardt has written: the idea that Denmark is a unique example of success during the period since 2019, when Frederiksen contested her first general election as party leader.
In fact, there are two other West European countries where center-left parties have been reelected in that time frame after carrying out undeniably progressive policies: Spain and Portugal. Like Frederiksen and the Danish Social Democrats, the Spanish and Portuguese Socialists had to work with other parties to form a government. In both cases, an alliance with the radical left was the foundation stone for these successes.
In Portugal, the Socialist Party (PS) took office in 2015 with support from the Communists and the Left Bloc after negotiating a platform for government that included a batch of popular measures. Those measures included the restoration of public holidays that…
Auteur: Daniel Finn
