Det Radikale Venstre

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Danish Social Liberal Party
Det Radikale Venstre
Party logo
Organizational leader Søren Bald
Political leader Margrethe Vestager
Founded 1905
Headquarters Christiansborg
1240 København K
Official ideology/
political position
Social Liberalism
International affiliation Liberal International
Website http://www.radikale.dk

Det Radikale Venstre (literally: The Radical Left) is a social liberal party in Denmark. It is officially translated by the party as Danish Social Liberal Party. A more traditional English-language name is the Radical Liberal Party.

Contents

The party is a member of Liberal International and the European Liberal Democrat and Reform Party. It was founded in 1905 as a split from the liberal Venstre Reform Party. The literal translation radical left is nowadays somewhat misleading, as the party is traditionally described as being in the center of the left-right political scale. The use of the word for "left" in the name of the former mother party Venstre and the Norwegian party Venstre is meant to refer to Liberalism and not Socialism.

The party president is Søren Bald and it has sixteen members of parliament. By far the most prominent member, however, is former parliament group leader and spokesperson Marianne Jelved, former vice prime minister and minister of economic affairs. The party is currently in opposition.

The party performed well at the 2005 elections. It came out with 9.2% of the popular vote and 17 seats in Parliament, a gain of eight seats. After the 2007 elections, the party lost 8 seats and now has a total of 9. The party remains in opposition to the right-wing coalition, led by the Liberal Party.

Lately the party has been inspired by Richard Florida's book "The rise of the Creative Class". The party have also released their own book/political program called "Det kreative Danmark" (The Creative Denmark).

Current issues high on the agenda for the party are:

  • Strong opposition to the tight immigration policies of the current government, particularly the 24 year rule (a measure that prevents foreign spouses of Danish citizens from gaining residence permits if either is under the age of 24, officially to avoid forced marriages).
  • Opposition to the educational policies of the current government, which according to the party stresses centralization, nationalized testing and old-fashioned educational ideas over creativeness, methodical freedom of teachers and personal development of pupils.
  • A major tax reform, which should simplify the tax system in such a way that income taxes will be reduced in favour of more environmental taxes, less tax deductions and higher taxes on real estate. The point of this is to make working more attractive and the hiring of service workers more attractive. This implies that the party is also opposed to the current government's "tax freeze" (skattestop) which prohibits any tax increases, but also changes of the taxation pattern.

Some prominent members of the party have criticised the current strategy as being too left-leaning and depending too much on the Social Democrats.

On 7 May 2007 MP Naser Khader and MEP Anders Samuelsen announced that they had left the party and founded the New Alliance party along with Conservative MEP Gitte Seeberg.

During the following debate the party first distanced itself from the Social Democrats, but after being critised internally for that too, returned to an oppositional role.

In the election in November 2007 the party was reduced by almost half, many voters leaving for New Alliance, but even more for the Socialist People's Party.

At a press release on 15 June 2007, it was announced that MP Margrethe Vestager would take over the leadership of the party after Marianne Jelved, and that the party would rethink its strategy and will now consider forming a coalition government with either the left or right side of parliament.[1]

Vestager clarified during the run-up to the 2007 election that her party would only be supporting a government lead by the Social Democrats. In the 2007 parliamentary elections, it received 5.1% of the vote, and 9 out of 179 seats.

The party has traditionally kept it self in the center of the political scale, however since the nineties, they have cooperated mainly with the Social Democratic Party, and thus supported the left side of the parliament. During the recent 2007 election, the possibility of cooperating with Liberal/Conservative government has been a major source of debate inside the party, but was rejected by the parliamentary group leader Margrethe Vestager.

RV would be comparable to Green parties in most of Europe and North America, being economically centrist to centre-left, culturally left-wing, and in tune with the post-materialist politics of the new middle class. In Britain, this would place them on the left-wing of the Liberal Democrats, while in France or Germany, RV would best be compared with the right-wings of the social-democratic parties. The Dutch D'66 is one of its closest sister parties ideologically.

References: [2]

Parliamentary group leaders in the Folketing:

References: [2][1]

  1. ^ a b Haahr, Ulla (2007-06-15). Vestager ny radikal dronning (Danish). Danmarks Radio. Retrieved on 2007-12-11.
  2. ^ a b Pedersen, Sune; Lidegaard, Bo (eds.) (2005). B radikalt 1905-2005 (Danish). Copenhagen: Gyldendal, p. 392-93. ISBN 87-02-03315-1.

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