Society
The New Statesman Profile - Denmark
Published 09 October 2000
Its porn is fun, its cities clean, and in social justice it is leagues ahead of us. As for that No . . . Denmark profiled
"Sex, suicide and socialism": those were the three deadly words used by President Dwight Eisenhower nearly half a century ago to characterise Godless Scandinavia. But, for many progressives around the world, the countries of democratic northern Europe still remain the closest to their idea of a secular paradise. Clean, egalitarian, tolerant, if more than a touch smug and self-righteous, the Nordic countries are a standing affront to those neoliberal ideologues who cannot accept or understand that it is quite possible to combine effectively economic efficiency with social justice in an open market economy. The Third Way was practical social democratic politics in Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland, rather than a vacuous soundbite, long before the long-haired Tony Blair had ever strummed his guitar.
None of this seems likely to trouble Britain's Europhobes, whose views of the wider Continent remain confused and ignorant. Indeed, Denmark was the toast of the Conservative Party conference last week, after its people voted No to their country joining the European single currency. To Europhobes such as the former chancellor Norman Lamont, the plucky little Danes have put two fingers up to the Brussels bureaucrats in the name of patriotism and national independence. With all the haughty condescension that is typical of the British when we look abroad, the opponents of UK membership of the euro have suddenly discovered hidden virtues in a country they know only through Shakespeare's Hamlet, Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales, Copenhagen's mermaid, imports of Danish butter and ham, the wonders of Legoland and Bang & Olufsen's high-tech sound equipment.
It may be far away, but Denmark is now serving a useful purpose in an internal struggle in British politics that looks set to last for a good number of years to come. The Danish thumbs-down to the euro has given credibility to the UK Europhobes, who can no longer be dismissed by the more vulgar, laddish champions of the Britain in Europe movement as revolving-eyed loonies posturing on the fringe. The Daily Mirror's tirade against Denmark for being a small, insignificant place reveals much of the typical de haut en bas arrogance of our tabloid press towards a fervently Anglophile country with a democratic tradition longer and stronger than our own.
Indeed, civilised Denmark seems a surprising country for our own Europhobes to enthuse about, even if it is part of a Nordic region that continues to display a widespread scepticism about the merits of closer European integration. Sweden continues to dither over the virtues of euro membership, while Norway stands resplendent in its comfortable, self-imposed isolation, completely outside the European Union, although part of a wider trade area, living the rich life on the back of North Sea oil and gas revenues. Only Finland is playing the good European as a euro member, perhaps driven by its desire to grow closer to the Continent's heartland, for fear of a turn for the worse in neighbouring Russia.
In fact, the cultures of Denmark and the other Nordic countries remain incorrigible provocations to the self-righteous moral values of the British right. The Danes - well known in the region for their happy-go-lucky attitude - have a well-deserved reputation for tolerance of deviance and dissent. On the edge of Copenhagen's city centre lies Christiania, a hippy-ridden, drug-infested ghetto where the police rarely go and the enemies of convention enjoy themselves, untroubled by state intrusion save for receiving regular and generous welfare handouts. It is the sort of place designed to give our Home Secretary, Jack Straw, a heart attack.
The Danish sex trade may have become tawdry, attractive only to visiting English football supporters and businessmen, but it should not be forgotten that Copenhagen was once the city where the censorious Lord Longford and Mary Whitehouse were suitably shocked at the assorted antics of party animals in the capital's clubs. Danish pornography is often regarded by those who know about such matters as some of the best, mainly because it usually has a sense of humour and is free of lugubrious, Anglo-Saxon guilt. In short, Denmark is the kind of Babylon designed to give Ann Widdecombe nightmares.
But the horrors of the country for our rampant social authoritarians do not stop at such laid-back acceptance of human frailty. British Europhobes also ought to acknowledge the cradle-to-grave welfare state that continues to make Denmark one of the most egalitarian and progressive societies in western Europe. From lavishly subsidised state childcare provision and help for single mothers to gargantuan pensions for the old, the beneficent Danish state boasts a huge public sector where nearly one in every three Danes works, as well as a dedication to activism that would make new Labour shudder with alarm. As much as 58 per cent of the country's gross domestic product is spent by the public sector, a figure outstripped in the world only by its Nordic neighbour Sweden. This contrasts with a mere 38 per cent in the UK. Denmark's marginal tax rates are far above the UK's levels, but most Danes seem prepared to pay for the public services they continue to enjoy. Remarkably, the lavish public sector coexists with a level of private affluence that remains one of the highest in the world. Here is a country where poverty and social exclusion are virtually extinct.
Indeed, it is the very security and prosperity of Denmark that may help to explain the nation's No vote in the euro referendum. The real reason for the result was not a sudden outburst of blinkered and hateful xenophobia of the kind William Hague's Conservatives seem to favour, but a widespread fear on the dominant Danish left, especially among young people employed in the public sector, that the welfare state would be destroyed if the country were submerged within a common European currency union. It was the far-left Socialist People's Party that could claim to be the genuine victor in Denmark's referendum, not the anti-tax, nationalistic, right-wing Danish People's Party.
Worries that the euro and deeper European integration might destroy the comfortable social democracies built up over the past half-century are widespread across the rest of Scandinavia, too, especially in Sweden, where the ruling Social Democrats are divided over the euro, and the Left Party - the former Communist Party and now the third-largest grouping in parliament - can exploit anti-EU feelings among women and public sector workers.
In Britain, Europhobes, as they search for alliances with opponents of European integration elsewhere, need to recognise there is little in common between their insular, parochial attitudes and those of most Danes who rejected the euro. In fact, it is the British left that should draw important lessons from the referendum result. Denmark's ruling Social Democrats and their trade union partners failed to convince their core voters that entering economic and monetary union would not mean the creation of a banker's Europe without a human face. Defending and modernising the welfare state is not an ignoble cause. Joining the euro should not mean the end of the postwar social settlement of full employment, state benefits, redistributive taxation and an efficient public sector. But the Danish prime minister, Poul Nyrup Rasmussen, failed to convince enough voters that their model state would not fall victim to a new European order based on a deflationary monetary policy determined by the Frankfurt-based European Central Bank. This is a serious setback for those who fail to see why the Nordic model should die in a wider European project.
The achievements of the social market economy in countries such as Denmark and the other Nordic lands need to be recognised and absorbed if the EU's ideals are to regain their dynamism. The true lesson of the Danish referendum is of no real comfort to Britain's Conservatives. Most of the cheering crowds in Copenhagen were not dreaming of a return to a sour, inward-looking, authoritarian nation state, but to a broader, idealistic union of diversity and freedom built on democratic values. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to suggest that the No result in Denmark was a resounding vote of confidence in that country's attractive version of the Nordic model.
The rest of the EU should aspire to the same type of society. Making the EU more democratic and open may be a positive result of what happened in Denmark. A people's Europe can be built only on consent and co-operation. If that means turning the EU into a more Nordic-influenced place, then so much the better.
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