Swing to the Left

As Danes voted last week in favor of joining the European Common Market, they little guessed that they were also ensuring a change in the country's leadership. Jens Otto Krag, 58, had campaigned long and arduously for a yes vote, and now chose the moment of victory as "a good occasion to step down." In his place as Prime Minister, the Social Democratic Party confirmed Krag's personal choice: Anker Henrik Jorgensen, 50, plump and goateed president of the 250,000-member Unskilled Workers' Union, Denmark's largest.

Krag kept his resignation a secret until the end of the Prime Minister's traditional state of the nation speech with which he opened the Folketing, or Parliament, last week. He would have stayed on to weather the political storm if the Danes had voted against membership in the Common Market, he said later. But now his sudden announcement caught his countrymen by surprise, though some intimates had detected signs of disenchantment in recent months. Krag, who is married to pretty Actress Helle Virkner, is essentially an intellectual and introvert, and he may have grown weary of the splits within his party and continuous pressure from the left wing. If anything, early success --he became a Cabinet minister at 33 and was Prime Minister for eight of the past ten years--helped to dampen his political appetite. He once told friends: "I got into this too young." Last week he added: "Twenty-five years in various ministerial posts should be enough. The time I have used talking to newsmen I will now use for reading."

Krag also had shrewdly chosen the path of political discretion. A large turnout of voters (nearly 90% of those eligible) resoundingly approved Krag's Common Market policy by 1,957,959 to 1,135,451, evidently agreeing with him that Denmark had no choice but to follow its best customer, Britain, into the European Economic Community. But Krag's triumph was tempered by the fact that almost half of the no votes came from traditional supporters of his Social Democratic Party. They included many trade unionists who feared that tiny Denmark (pop. 5,000,000) would have too little influence on the EEC bureaucracy. Krag would have faced a difficult task in healing his party's wounds. As a graduate in economics, he has earned the respect but never the full trust that the average Danish workingman reserves for a fellow worker.

By that measure, Anker Jorgensen enjoys abundant support. Jorgensen was orphaned at the age of four and grew up in poverty. He worked as a messenger boy and as an unskilled shipyard and factory worker; later he became a spokesman for warehouse workers and a union leader. A member of the Folketing since 1964, Jorgensen has never held a Cabinet post. But his proletarian background should calm the worries of Danish workers and Socialists over the EEC vote, which he supported.

Jorgensen may find that those least impressed with his unexpected eminence are at home in his four-room flat. When Jorgensen was sounded out on the prime ministership, he sought the advice of his wife Ingrid. Her reply: "I don't think you ought to, Anker. If you ask me, we're happy as it is." Son Lars, 11, was equally unenthusiastic. Asked by his grandmother how he felt about his father taking the new job, Lars, perhaps speaking for the prevoting age youth, shrugged, "Hell, I don't care."

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