In Mette Frederiksen’s opening speech – the sixth of its kind – local welfare filled considerably more than the major international lines.
The Prime Minister of course also reads opinion polls – in the latest of this kind it appears that if there were elections now, only about one in three Danes would vote for the majority government – and the analysis in the Social Democratic Party is quite clear that it is once again time to bet party support on red.
The speech was about all the good the state can do for citizens – in the future we must have a package for COPD patients, later for people with diabetes and other chronic diseases. Families with children must have better conditions, young and old too, and on top of that there must also be more money for the defence.
The speech was also red in the way that not many words were wasted on where the money and labor will come from. The whole issue of retirement age was thus referred to a later date and a future treatment.
She spent most of her time on the most vulnerable: those from the bench, those with the dogs, those on drugs and the strongest beers.
Certainly a case that is close to the prime minister’s heart, but conversely also one that could well have filled something more somewhat earlier in Mette Frederiksen’s long career at the center of power.
But after all, better late than never.
– There are situations where we have to let vulnerable people live their own lives, but that doesn’t mean we have to leave them in the lurch. We just have to be careful not to have too fixed ambitions on behalf of others, said the Prime Minister, who even came up with something concrete: More cities must have drug-taking rooms, so that fewer people risk dying of an overdose, prisons only for the vulnerable and people must meet with less regular access from the system’s side.
There is actually nothing negative to say about that part of the speech. Mette Frederiksen is absolutely right that we have organized Denmark – as she said – according to the great majority, and therefore left a small minority of sad existences on the platform.
There will be disagreements with that part of the speech, and when the government comes up with a more concrete plan during the autumn, it will probably have to be adopted.
But as important as the matter is, it will not be the one that saves the government, and the question is how long the Prime Minister can settle for shades of red.
2024-10-01 17:08:19
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