Only four months ago, Copenhagen student Sven Li’s view of the prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, was, like many Danish voters, less than favourable. The 21-year-old, who was about to host an election event for Green Left (Socialistisk Folkeparti, known as SF) in his cramped but cosy halls-of-residence kitchen, said the woman who had led Denmark’s centrist coalition government for the past three and a half years had shown herself to be a “very cold, calculating figure”.
Her Social Democrats were suffering too, going down to sweeping defeats in municipal elections in November and losing control of Copenhagen for the first time in more than a century. But since then, and as Denmark prepares for an early general election on 24 March, Li’s view of the prime minister has transformed, first as a result of her handling of the geopolitical crisis with Donald Trump over Greenland, and second because of her recent shift to the left in some areas – including a 0.5% wealth tax to fund smaller class sizes in schools.
