Och, Denmark! ☹

Ever since moving to Scotland from Denmark a few months after the 2001 election (which put Anders Fogh Rasmussen into power — imagine a Tory government supported by UKIP), I’ve been increasingly unhappy about the way Denmark is developing.

While Scotland has found its own voice during the independence referendum and is now speaking loudly in favour of tolerance, solidarity and equality, Denmark seems to running away from these values.

The two modern Danish lodestars appear to be xenophobia and neoliberalism. Let’s look at both in turn.

Xenophobia has been on the rise for more than twenty years, and I was already starting to find the tone of the debate uncomfortable in the 1990s. Dansk Folkeparti (the Danish equivalent of UKIP) was always at the centre of this development — I described it like this a while ago:

The typical pattern has been like this: Dansk Folkeparti make a suggestion (e.g., to limit the number of immigrants, or to put some restrictions on Denmark’s EU membership); the other parties at first dismiss it, but the media give it plenty of coverage (because it’s always a good story from a journalistic point of view), and some dissenters within the other parties are quickly found that agree with it, and eventually the other parties implement at least 50% of the original proposal. As soon as this has happened, Dansk Folkeparti start demanding even more, and the whole process starts again, with the result that after 10-20 years, the mainstream parties have adopted policies that are more extreme than those originally advocated by Dansk Folkeparti.

This is making it increasingly uncomfortable to live in Denmark if you’re not 100% Danish. Theresa Nguyen, a Danish journalist of Vietnamese origin, described it well a couple of days ago:

[I’d like to] talk about the feelings that are awakened within me when a candidate for prime minister says that “Denmark is in danger of becoming multicultural” with pride in their voice. Dear Helle Thorning-Schmidt and Lars Løkke Rasmussen, your rhetoric makes me so angry and sad — yes, almost depressed — that more than anything I just want to leave that awful Denmark that I am barely able to recognise any more. […] The Denmark that I see now is quite unrecognisable. I don’t have the words to describe the missing link between the Denmark of my memories and the Denmark I, as an adult Dane from an ethnic minority background, must now contribute to and be a part of. Your debate last Sunday was a disgrace to the generous and bountiful country of my childhood. Your views on people and our global responsibilities frightened me and filled me with shame. […] Your divisive rhetoric is giving a lot of people the desire to leave the country. But those who can and probably will leave are people like me; the educated and resourceful citizens that Denmark strongly needs to stay and pull our weight. The rest, those who have been less lucky to get an education, do not have the ability to leave Denmark. They are forced to stay behind and listen to your words.

([Jeg vil gerne] tale om de følelser, der bliver vækket i mig, når en statsministerkandidat med stolthed i stemmen siger, »at Danmark er i fare for at blive multikulturelt«. Kære Helle og Løkke, jeres retorik gør mig så vred og trist – ja, nærmest deprimeret – at jeg mest af alt bare har lyst til at forlade det forfærdelige Danmark, jeg snart ikke kan genkende længere. […] Det Danmark, der møder mig, er mildest talt uigenkendeligt. Jeg mangler ord til at beskrive den manglende kobling mellem det Danmark, jeg husker, og det Danmark, jeg som en voksen dansker med anden etnisk baggrund nu skal bidrage til og være en del af. Jeres duel på ord i søndags var en skændsel for det generøse og overskudsfyldte land, jeg var barn af. Jeres syn på mennesker og vores globale ansvar skræmte mig og fyldte mig med skam. […] Med jeres splittelsesretorik giver I rigtig mange lyst til at forlade landet. Men dem, der kan og formentlig vil gøre det, er dem, der er som mig; de veluddannede og ressourcestærke borgere, som Danmark har så såre brug for bliver og tager vores tørn. Resten, dem, der har været mindre heldige til at tage en uddannelse, har slet ikke muligheden for at forlade Danmark. De er tvunget til at blive tilbage og lytte til jeres ord.)

I’m so much happier living in a country where Ruth Wishart could say her famous words: “A Scot is someone born here, and anyone who has paid us the compliment of settling here.”

The other Danish malaise is neoliberalism. Although the Danish welfare state is working well and is quite affordable for the state, Danes keep demanding lower taxes and most people have grown up with so much job security that they honestly believe unemployment can never happen to them. For a while it was possible to cut costs without great consequences, but it’s now getting to the point where it’s becoming visible in international comparisons. To take but one example, in 2001 Danish unemployment benefits on average gave workers 66% of their previous salary, which was the highest in the EU; by 2012 this had fallen to 40%, which placed Denmark as number 10 out of 14 countries (less than Spain but marginally more than the UK).

When I tell Danes they’ll soon start seeing real poverty if they continue this development, they don’t believe me. Again I really enjoy living in a country that has already learnt the lesson of the Thatcher years — looking at Denmark from Scotland feels a bit like observing a train crash in slow motion from a distance.

Of course not all Danes agree with the xenophobia and the neoliberalism. In the same way as many people in England are still voting Labour because of what it used to be like, many Danes are still supporting the Social Democrats without realising that they’re increasingly a part of the problem. And of course there are several parties that do what they can to change things for the better.

Danes get disenfranchised two years after leaving the country, so I haven’t had a vote for over a decade. However, if I was able vote in the general election on Thursday, I’d probably support Enhedslisten (or possibly Alternativet). I used to be a member of the Social Liberal Party, but although they’re still strongly against xenophobia, they seem to have forgotten their social conscience and are increasingly becoming a neoliberal party (or perhaps more accurately, one of the parties of Necessity), so I wouldn’t really consider voting for them any more.