The day after election night, when Mette Frederiksen (S) was asked where the parliamentary basis for a new government most likely lay, she gestured toward the cluster of left-leaning parties.
»I think the most realistic option is over here«, she said.
But one particular sticking point looms for Frederiksen.
At Wednesday’s day-after debate between the party leaders, Moderaterne’s leader Lars Løkke Rasmussen put it bluntly as he explained why he—and Moderaterne’s pivotal mandates—would oppose, and for now effectively block, a quick government formation with the red parties as supporting partners.
»Honestly, I don’t think Denmark needs a policy line that has to be signed off by Enhedslisten’s national executive,« he said.
With that remark, Løkke is prodding at something previous governments have experienced: that the policies of Parliament’s farthest-left party are ultimately decided in Enhedslisten’s national executive committee.
Just ask Bjarne Corydon, who, as Socialdemokratiet’s finance minister from 2011 to 2015, from time to time had to contend with the then supporting party’s 25-member national executive committee.
In November 2012, Corydon had to wait for a meeting of Enhedslisten’s national executive committee before he could be certain the party would sign onto the budget agreement he had already negotiated with the party’s parliamentary negotiators.
The following year, the same Corydon could watch the media coverage as the supporting party’s executive committee appeared poised to decide his political fate.
»EL executive committee gives green light to topple Corydon«, read a headline on April 24 of that year.
Enhedslisten never made good on the threats, because, as the party reasoned, it would only result in a new government led by Lars Løkke Rasmussen — and that, after all, was worse.
Today, talks to form a new government will begin at the Prime Minister’s Office, where Frederiksen will sit at the head of the table as the King’s appointed royal investigator.
The Prime Minister’s Office says that both Moderaterne and Enhedslisten are among the seven parties invited to meet on Friday.
Confronted with Løkke’s warnings, Enhedslisten’s parliamentary leader, Peder Hvelplund, points out:
»It is Enhedslisten’s parliamentary group that conducts the government negotiations«.
»We continuously involve our national executive committee and our working committee. More broadly, we try to stay in close dialogue with all our members while we negotiate, so we can ensure strong backing for any eventual agreement«, he continued.
Enhedslisten’s press office indicated that neither Hvelplund nor the party’s political spokesman, Pelle Dragsted, had time for an interview or to respond to Løkke’s warnings. The quote from the parliamentary leader was therefore sent to Politiken by text message.
In his reply, he does not address Politiken’s question of whether an agreement with Enhedslisten on forming a government in 2026 depends on the party’s national executive committee signing off.
Instead, Hvelplund wrote:
»We’re looking forward to pushing a red-and-green agenda in the negotiations—and of course we’ll conduct those talks in the negotiating room, not in the press.«
Unclear where it will end up
On Thursday, Løkke offered the following update on the talks when TV 2 met him at Christiansborg:
»We’re at the beginning of something that I don’t think anyone has a precise sense of how will end«.
In the coming negotiations, Enhedslisten will be represented by Hvelplund and his fellow lawmaker Victoria Velasquez. And, of course, by Pelle Dragsted. Importantly: not in the capacity of political leader — Enhedslisten does not have one — but as the party’s political spokesman.
As Politiken phoned around for a response to Løkke’s warning, several members of Enhedslisten’s national executive were quick to note that the executive, not Dragsted, is the party’s real center of power — and that he is merely its political spokesman.
But the executive committee members, in unison, refer reporters to Dragsted as the person who should answer questions right now.
That goes for Emil Viskum, too, a member of the party’s national executive.
But do you expect to be consulted on whatever government agreement is eventually put together?
»Of course. Enhedslisten’s national executive will, naturally, weigh in on what the party decides to do,« he said.
But will you be consulted? That’s really what Løkke is getting at: that you’re the sort who have to be involved in everything ...
»I’d really just like to refer you to the fact that it’s Peder (the member of Parliament Peder Hvelplund, ed.) and Pelle who are speaking on this. But of course Enhedslisten’s national executive committee also takes a position on what Enhedslisten does«.
A ghost
Today, Pernille Skipper is a professional board member and political commentator. But from 2011 to 2022 she was a member of Parliament for Enhedslisten, and from 2016 to 2021 she also served as the party’s political spokesman.
According to her, the party underwent several shifts both before and during her time as political spokesman.
One of those shifts, she said, was that Enhedslisten increasingly wanted a seat at the table and to strike larger political agreements at Christiansborg.
»It meant that the notion of the national executive sitting on the sidelines and signing off on deals had to be dropped. So the specter that has sometimes lingered — that Enhedslisten’s politicians and MPs can’t act independently — was put to rest while I was political spokesperson,« she said.
She notes that from 2019 to 2022, Enhedslisten was part of ’every major agreement that set the direction for Denmark’.
»And of course, if you’re going to do a budget, billion-kroner Covid relief packages, climate deals — you name it — at the speed required, you can’t sit there with 25 people (on an executive committee, ed.) as a kind of backstop you constantly have to go back to«, she said.
»You have to act on a mandate and on the trust that you were chosen for the job, and that you can do the job. So it was obviously important to me at the time that Enhedslisten could act in the role we had set for ourselves«.
According to Skipper, there was no formal decision by the executive committee to give the parliamentary group more leeway. The group changed its practice after discussions with the executive committee about how to both respect that Enhedslisten is a party that places a high value on membership democracy, and at the same time make things more agile for the parliamentary group:
»If you want real influence over where the country is headed, you also have to be able to say yes — for example to a 6‑billion kroner aid package at 1 a.m. — when you’re sitting there on your own because you hold the mandate. That was simply unavoidable, and after those discussions the practice changed.«
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