Chairman of The Liberal Party of Denmark (V) and de facto PM Lars Løkke Rasmussen presented his top ten list towards 2020 at the opening of the Liberal National congress. As a prelude he rhetorically gathered his troops:’I would like to present to you the Liberal project for the next decade. I come to you with an open mind and ask: Shouldn't we jointly set up and achieve these goals?’
And then joined his troops around the so-called Danish Dream - which he saw as both a parallel and a contrast to the American Dream:
It was exactly this dream about fairness that researcher in political history Lars Hovbakke Sørensen, external associate professor at the University of Aarhus, saw as a revival of the political focus at the centre of Danish politics:
’It can be seen as a signal to be centre-focussed on the economic distribution of wealth on one hand to favour the Social Democrat side of the Danish electorate. And on the other hand to move towards the right on the values in order to favour the Conservative side of the Danish electorate,' Lars Hovbakke Sørensen explains.
As Lars Løkke Rasmussen himself put it during the national congress:
’We live in times where the people of '68 have settled with authorities – unfortunately also with the healthy authorities. We are now paying the price for that. And we must correct this!’
The Liberal Freedom Award 2009 was given to a local soccer club for its local social responsibility efforts to integrate local immigrants and juvenile delinquents through positive activities. This political historian Lars Hovbakke Sørensen saw as a way of signalling a Right wing value revival:
’It is a clear symbol of the political value line. They gave the price to the soccer club, because they want to signal, that the political value line reflects the concrete political initiatives. It is a clear signal that the value line - until now absent from the first period under Lars Løkke - will now revert.’
Political historian Hovbakke Sørensen furthermore puts this into a historic context:
’We saw the same thing happening during the Schlüter-government, when it didn't follow a strict value line. Then we saw the Fremskridtspartiet [which later split and reconstituted as The Danish People's Party (O)]. And furthermore during the 1960’ies under VKR coalition [Liberals, Conservatives, and Social-Liberals], where the political line wasn't Conservative enough, because the Social-Liberals joined the coalition. So the value line is important if they want to win the next election,’ Hovbakke Sørensen extends his argument - referring to a period where the abortion rules were liberated and the free pornography was introduced in Denmark.
It must be said that Lars Hovbakke Sørensen is known for a debate line to support Conservative and People's Party concepts. So Paradoxical News was paradoxed by the absense of other commentators to say the same thing. PN wasn't entirely convinced, and so asked another expert:
And Jens Hoff, Professor in political communication from the University of Copenhagen, doesn't find the same tendency in Lars Løkke Rasmussen's speech - nor in his political line.
'I don't think that Lars Løkke is a great value strategist - he is more of a pragmatic hands-on bureaucrat. I think that his speech and his ten goals witnessed a new line to reverse the former stringent value line under Anders Fogh Rasmussen. There are practically no value signals in these very concrete goals. And he opens up towards a broader collaboration accross the board,' Jens Hoff analyses the Liberal line put forward at the national congress.
Whether value revival or value reversal - Lars Løkke Rasmussen did come out of his bureaucratic political shop with his (I have a) Danish Dream speech. A bit more statesman-like. With bits and pieces for the local crowds and his Liberal troops in the back country.