The Liberal Party has removed the iconic Tax Freeze Counter from its website that tallied the number of days that the administration claimed not to have increased taxes.

The counter first saw the light of day on the Liberal site in 2001 when then newly appointed Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen introduced a tax freeze. Since then the counter totted up 3,173 days, and was a political trump card.

The financial and economic crisis, however, made it necessary to thaw the freeze in connection with the government’s economic recovery plan earlier this year, when levies were introduced without reducing other taxes. The  new LIberal Party site: gone is the Tax Freeze Counter!

The new Liberal site comes as the party begins its summer conference in Hanstholm, and also as former Liberal Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who is now NATO Secretary-General, rejects criticism of his economic policies while in office.

The Fogh Rasmussen administration has been criticised for not having introduced timely reforms. The former prime minister rejects the criticism.

“If I look back over the years when I was prime minister and ask whether we did what we could to brace Denmark effectively to manage any situation, my answer is a definite ‘yes’,” Fogh Rasmussen tells Ritzau.

“When I look back, I feel that we introduced important things that prepared Danish society to be able to manage the crisis better than most other countries,” Fogh Rasmussen says, pointing to low unemployment, lower taxes on the last earned krone, reductions in the national debt and a hold on public spending.

“Despite the fact that we had rather a lot of money in the bank, we didn’t use it. We put it aside to reduce our debt and give us space for manoevre,” he adds.