Setback for the Nanny State

Since he took over the leadership of the Social Democratic Party less than six years ago, Denmark's Prime Minister Jens Otto Krag, 53, has been forced to call parliamentary elections three times. Though energetic, craggily handsome and married to one of Denmark's cinema beauties, Krag has seemed less and less attractive to his country's voters with each successive ballot. He has not only acted highhanded in public (he has periodically scolded Danish workers for yearning for the better life), but has hurt his image by ignoring the sound political advice of his party cronies. He blundered, for example, by insisting on holding last week's elections right at income-tax time. That was the last straw. The Danes ousted Krag at the polls, ending the Socialist rule over their little kingdom (pop. 4,800,000) that has prevailed for most of the postwar years.

Even greater than their disenchantment with Krag personally was the irritation of Danish voters with his economic policies. Faced with worsening inflation, Krag tried last December to cancel a mandatory cost-of-living pay hike for Danish workers, but when some of his extreme leftist partners deserted him in a test vote on the issue in the Folketing, he called for new elections. During the campaign, the anti-Socialist opposition shrewdly played on rising Danish concern over increased unemployment (which is at 2.7%, still low by Western standards), a drop in Danish exports, the higher bill for welfare programs and the general direction of what many Scandinavians call their "nanny state," which hovers over them from nursery to old age.

The biggest gains at the polls were made by the Radical Liberals, who are considerably to the right of the Social Democrats. Their leader, Hilmar Baunsgaard, 48, was summoned at week's end to Christiansborg Palace by King Frederik IX to form a new government. Baunsgaard has displayed a pacifistic aversion to NATO, but he profited only slightly from the election-eve crash of a U.S. nuclear bomber in Danish-owned Greenland. He must form a coalition with other center parties, who undoubtedly will compel him to keep Denmark on its pro-Western course.

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