LENE ESPERSEN (4)

Not long ago (i.e. back in the late noughties) Lene Espersen was considered a highly likely candidate to become Prime Minister of Denmark. Young, competent and female, she hoovered up votes in her native north Jutland, meaning that she always got elected to Parliament. She duly became leader of her party, the Conservatives. Although the junior partner in the pre-2011 right-of-centre coalition Government, her age meant that she was well-placed to take over the leadership of the right if big brother Venstre slipped up. As Foreign Minister, she could burnish her international credentials.

Alas, things did not work out that way. She messed up from the start as Foreign Minister, failing to go to crucial meetings, spending time on holiday with her family instead. The Conservatives continued to slump in the polls, outgunned to the right by the ruthless Danish People's Party. She gave up the leadership of the party, but the new leaders couldn't convince the electorate that they were relevant. Even if the party gets over the threshold in next year's general election, it will be even more the junior partner in any coalition government. If you've been Foreign Minister and deputy Prime Minister in 2010, who wants to be merely Employment Minister in 2015?  

And so this week she quit politics and took a job in the private sector instead. Thereby confirming, for anybody who watches Borgen, that politics is a difficult business. Mistakes can be brutally costly, there's a lot of luck involved. And what once seemed certain doesn't always comes to pass.

Walter Blotscher