The daughter in law of Lord Kinnock has won the Danish general election and will become the country’s first female Prime Minister.
The centre-left coalition has ended the far rights 10 year grip on Denmark’s government.
Her victory was narrower than many had predicted, though, and it could produce a weaker than expected coalition.
It was predicated that the party would emerge with a five seat lead in the 179 chamber but she received only a three sear majority. The Social Democrats are now expected to form a government with the other two Liberal and left wing parties.
The new Prime Minister, Helle Thorning-Schmidt, leader of the left-wing Social Democrats, secured the victory over the ruling minority government of liberals and conservatives which had been kept in power by parliamentary support from the europhobic, Muslim-baiting Danish People’s party.
It was nevertheless a particularly tough campaign with both Thoring-Schmidt and her husband, Stephen Kinnock (son of Lord Kinnock) receiving personal attacks.
You can read the full story here.
Another week and the precarious nature of the Greek bailout continue to hang in the balance.
In Germany, Anglea Merkel’s coalition continued to debate over whether or not Greece should be allowed to fail.
Meanwhile an Austrian committee delayed a vote to ratify plans for a stronger bailout fund and Slovakia’s Eurosceptic parliamentary speaker demanded that Greece be allowed to go bust, and made it clear her would undermine the plan devised at a conference in July.
Amid the chaos is a voice of calm in the shape of José Manuel Barroso who said he was shocked at national leaders within the EU failing to keep their promises on the Eurozone. You can read the full article here.
British journalist, Will Hutton, has written a piece for today’s Comment is Free section in the Guardian about the euro zone crisis and carefully lays out a convincing argument as to why collective action is the only solution.
He makes a powerful argument.
His final words of advice are:’ Trying to pretend the interdependencies do not exist or that the collapse of the euro is the answer can only make matters worse. It is a straight choice: we do all we can to help each other or risk going down in what could be the worst economic contraction for a century.’ You can read the article in full here.
