DENMARK: Denmark's move to the right was cemented at noon yesterday when Prime Minister Mr Anders Fogh Rasmussen arrived at Ameliaborg, the Royal palace in Copenhagen, to announce to Queen Margarethe that his government coalition would "drive on" - despite his Venstre (Liberal) party having dropped four seats in Tuesday's general election.
Mr Rasmussen is the first Venstre leader to win re-election and with 52 seats in the 179-seat Folketing, or parliament, the party will form a coalition with its old partner, the Konservative party, the latter having increased its mandate by three seats to 19.
The coalition will again rely for its parliamentary majority on the controversial right-wing Dansk Folkeparti (Danish People's Party), which increased its representation by two seats to 24, thus cementing its position as the third-biggest party in the Danish parliament. However, Rasmussen rejected any possibilities of the Dansk Folkeparti being invited to join the government.
"In order to be a government, one needs consensus on all important issues, both domestic and international. The Folkeparti has a totally different view of Denmark's participation in the EU than we have. That makes it impossible for them to join us in the government," he said to a scrum of press outside the palace yesterday. However, he did hint at changes to the cabinet after consultation with his Konservative party partners.
Venstre's loss of four seats paled into insignificance alongside the collapse of main rivals the Social Democrats, who dropped from 47 seats to 42. Their worst result since 1973, the largest opposition party now faces it's second leadership crisis in as many elections after leader Mogens Lykkeoft announced his intention to resign.
Having dominated Danish politics for much of the last century, the Social Democrats are credited with building one of the world's most wide-ranging welfare states. However, in recent years they have also been associated with extreme taxation, huge bureaucracy, a lethargic business environment, spiralling immigration and an inability to stick to their election promises.
Lykkeoft's party was not the only party leader pondering what had gone wrong - the Kristendemokraterne (Christian Democrats) lost all four of its seats.
The big winners on Tuesday were the small Radikal Venstre (Social Liberals) party, who won seven seats, raising their total to 16 after a campaign of strong opposition to the government's tough immigration laws.
This dramatic increase in support for the Radikals, combined with the slight increase for the Dansk Folkeparti, points to a divergence of opinions among Danes on immigration. The last government cut asylum-seeker numbers from 12,512 in 2001 to 3,222 last year, but the success of Radikal Venstre suggests many Danes think the immigration laws have gone far enough.