LENE ESPERSEN

Lene Espersen is Denmark's attractive - some would say sexy - Foreign Minister, and the leader of the Conservatives, the junior partner in the country's right of centre government. She is also in a political hole.

Danish Governments are usually coalitions; and for the past three decades, they have alternated between right and left. In the 1980's, the Conservatives under Poul Schlüter were top dogs over their partners Venstre; then the 1990's saw a left of centre Government under Poul Nyrup Rasmussen. When the right got in again in 2001, two things were different. First, it was Venstre, under the religiously "on-message" Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who were the senior partners. Secondly, even in conjunction with the Conservatives, the right could only form a minority government. In order to get legislation passed, they have had to rely on the very right-wing, anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim and generally all-round nasty Danish People's Party, a phenomenon which has exposed the Conservatives' otherwise solid right flank.

When the party's nice but ineffectual leader Bendt Bendtsen stepped down in 2008 in order to get himself a fat pension as an MEP in Brussels, the choice was between two talented women; Lene Espersen, Justice Minister and long the heir-apparent, and Connie Hedegaard, the Climate Minister, who ran the Copenhagen Conference. Espersen won, shuffled her rival off to Brussels as Denmark's commissioner, and took over Bendtsen's former job as Economy Minister. This may have minimised the changes in ministerial portfolios, but was otherwise bad timing, as the finance crisis struck Denmark with a vengeance, and unemployment, though starting from a low base, began to rocket. With the Government losing popularity, particularly after Anders Fogh Rasmussen went off to become Secretary General of Nato, something more radical was needed. In February this year Espersen dumped long-standing Foreign Minister and party colleague Per Stig Møller, demoted him to Culture Minister, and took his place.

Since then, it has been downhill all the way. A young mother with small children, she has twice missed meetings with colleagues from other countries in order to have family holidays; the first occasion at the Nordic Council, where she was due to meet Hilary Clinton for the first time, and the second at the E.U. This has gone down very badly in Denmark, a small country which has few opportunities to sit at the top table with the big boys. The second holiday was particularly inapt, given the criticism she had faced first time round, and which she had promised to take to heart. With the Danish People's Party's leader Pia Kjærsgaard rubbing salt in the wounds from the sideline, the Conservatives have gone into freefall in public opinion polls, not helped by the fact that the Financial Times in Germany dubbed her the clumsiest Foreign Minister in the EU. Not surprisingly, there are now muttered calls from within her party for the head of the once darling of the right.

All of which proves - yet again - two things. First, it is difficult to be a party leader from the position of Foreign Minister (Guido Westerwelle is facing a similar problem running the FDP in Germany). The former requires you to be at home and on top of all your colleagues; the latter requires you to spend lots of time abroad. Secondly, there is no such thing in politics as a shoo-in. Lene Espersen was once considered a shoo-in for both the leadership of her party, and as a future Prime Minister of Denmark. She achieved the first, but there are not many people left who would put money on the second.

Walter Blotscher