As I reported a couple of months ago, after the Social Democratic administration’s mink scandal, the Social Liberal party issued an ultimatum that the administration had to call a parliamentary election before October or else it would face a vote of no confidence. The next election must be held by June 2023 in any case. While Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has yet refused to accede to the Social Liberals’ demand, in the slow summer news season the election campaign is taking shape. The parties hold their annual conferences, and they’re unveiling their new bribes offers for the electorate.

Rainbow kid. Photo by Jelleke Vanooteghem on Unsplash.

The right-wing parties, as usual, are giving voters economic incentives. The Liberal Party wants to give full-time wage earners tax relief of DKK 3,000 ($400) (DK). The objective is to get more people into full-time work. People currently working part-time will have a right to an interview about switching to full-time. The party has other proposals on limiting transfer payments, particularly for immigrants.

Not to be outdone, the Conservative Party wants to abolish the top tax bracket (DK) by 2030. “This is a tax that is marinated in envy,” said Søren Pape Poulsen, the party leader who also announced his candidacy for prime minister. The top bracket (called topskat) now amounts to a 15 percent tax on income above DKK 552,000 ($73,000). The Conservatives also want to reduce duties on household goods and electric cars and raise the standard deduction so that working-class families will also see a gain of around DKK 11,000.

We’ll see that bet and raise

The smaller New Right party will go much further (DK). It proposes removing income tax on earnings up to DKK 90,000 and introducing a flat tax of 37 percent. It wants to reduce or abolish duties on cars, electricity, inheritance, and alcohol. These are among the party’s 97 proposals that it concedes must be worked out over a longer period. It also has three that are non-negotiable if it is to support a governing coalition, and they all involve tightening conditions for refugees and other immigrants.

The Moderates, led by former Liberal Party Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen, have a more moderate proposal to reduce corporate tax (DK) from 22 percent to 15 percent and reduce tax on stock profits. Løkke Rasmussen, whose main purpose in founding the party was to pursue a centrist governing coalition, has rejected the prospect of supporting another administration led by Mette Frederiksen, whom he, like some others, considers arrogant and power-drunk.

So what have the Social Democrats come up with to counter these temptations? They had a big announcement on the occasion of Copenhagen Pride Week.

Enabling reassignment at birth

They are preparing a bill that will give children down to the age of zero the right to change their legal gender (DK). (That’s the way the lowest age is expressed in Danish: one speaks of 0-årige børn—“zero-year-old children.”) In other words, no age limitation, although children under 15 will have to get their parents’ permission. The current age eligibility is 18. A gender sex change does not require surgical or pharmaceutical intervention. It will allow children to change their civil registration numbers, which are sex-specific: males’ end on an odd number and females’ end on an even number.

The main reason often given for providing this option is that children with gender dysphoria can be suicidal, although no one is claiming that toddlers are at risk. “With the proposal, we take the children’s side and help a group of children and youths who already may have difficulties,” said Mogens Jensen, Minister of Employment, which covers equality issues. If enacted, the law might be the most lenient on the issue in Europe. The change would be reversible, though, proponents note, like product purchases, which are returnable within two weeks

The party had floated a similar proposal two years ago. At that time it didn’t gain enough support from its left-wing allies to bring it to a vote in Parliament. It then referred the issue to the Danish Council on Ethics, which advocated a minimum age of ten or 12 because prepubescent children couldn’t be expected to comprehend all the ramifications of such a change. In the meantime, the remaining administration supporters in Parliament have come around.

Mette had promised to be “the children’s prime minister”

The proposal has predictably provoked outrage (DK) on the right wing. “Identity politics has run amuck,” tweeted Pia Kjærsgaard of the Danish People’s Party. But one factor in its favor is that minors already have the right to undergo hormone treatment—after a comprehensive medical evaluation. They may thus be in the process of physiologically transitioning without being able to change their formal legal status. That right to treatment was granted in 2016 under Løkke Rasmussen’s Liberal Party administration, which had the support of all the right-wing parties.

Whether this will lead to conflicts about transgirls’ access to girls’ sports, locker rooms, and so on remains to be seen. The measure may not boost the Social Democrats’ election results, though, since zero-year-olds’ enfranchisement won’t extend to voting. But the party does have economic proposals too. It wants to put a ceiling on rent increases (DK) to give relief from inflation, for example, which even the Social Liberals have criticized as interference in the private sector.