ELECTION FEVER (6)

As I thought might be the case, the forces pulling apart the four right of centre parties that won last week's general election were bigger than the forces pulling them together. After a week of negotiations, Prime Ministerial candidate Lars Løkke Rasmussen has had to accept first, that no government could be formed with all of them and secondly, that no government can be formed with any of them except his own party Venstre. The others are now advising him to form a minority government, which they will support (or not?) from the sidelines on single issues.

I can see why the others don't want the responsibility of joining any government. Joining means painful compromise, and they are all terrified of being accused of breaking promises to their core voters (which is what happened when the left of centre coalition was formed in 2011). Yet can you really form a government when your party has only 34 seats in Parliament out of 179, and when that party is only the third largest? It does seem a rather odd idea.

Walter Blotscher