Helle Thorning-Schmidt

Helle Thorning-Schmidt (born December 14, 1966, Rødovre, Denmark) is a Danish politician who became Denmark’s first female prime minister when she took office in 2011; she held the post until 2015.

Early life and start in politics

Thorning-Schmidt was the youngest of three children in a family split by divorce. She grew up with her businesswoman mother in Ishøj, a town near Copenhagen that had attracted many immigrants. Her father was an economics professor in Copenhagen. While in high school, Thorning-Schmidt was involved with peace movements and antiapartheid efforts. After studying political science at the University of Copenhagen, she earned a master’s degree in European studies in 1993 from the College of Europe in Brugge, Belgium, where she met Stephen Kinnock (the son of former British Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock), whom she would marry in 1996.

Having earned another master’s degree, in political science, from the University of Copenhagen (1994), Thorning-Schmidt became an administrator for the Danish Social Democratic Party’s delegation to the European Parliament (1994–97) and then worked as a consultant for the Danish Confederation of Trade Unions (1997–99). In 1999 she was elected as a member of the European Parliament (1999–2004). In 2005 she was elected to the Danish Folketing (parliament) and that same year was chosen as the leader of the Social Democratic Party. Although the party suffered considerable losses in the 2007 election to the ruling Liberal-Conservative coalition led by Prime Minister Anders Rasmussen, Thorning-Schmidt remained its leader.

Prime ministership

In the 2011 election the Social Democrats (44 seats) again finished behind the Liberals (47 seats) but were able to join the Social Liberal Party and the Socialist People’s Party in a centre-left minority coalition government with Thorning-Schmidt as prime minister. She came into office promising to raise taxes on Denmark’s banks and its wealthiest citizens, to increase social spending, and to roll back the stringent restraints on immigration initiated by the previous government. She also proposed extending the workday by 12 minutes (without compensation), thereby increasing personal productivity by one hour per week. Denmark’s struggling economy had been the central issue of the election, and Thorning-Schmidt laboured to guide her government through implementing harsh tax and unemployment-benefit reforms and spending cuts aimed at deficit reduction. In the process, she was labeled by some as a promise breaker.

She was also confronted with a series of scandals that included security issues concerning a cabinet appointee and sexual misconduct by leading Social Democrats. Worse still was the revelation that her husband—the director of the World Economic Forum, who worked in its offices in Switzerland weekdays and joined Thorning-Schmidt and their two daughters in Copenhagen on weekends—had not paid any income tax in Denmark. Although tax authorities exonerated Kinnock, the public outcry was immense. The matter brought attention to the couple’s periods of separation and led to assertions that Kinnock was gay, which Thorning-Schmidt emphatically denied. Although her popularity plummeted, Thorning-Schmidt weathered the political storm with toughness that flew in the face of those who saw her as effete and characterized her as “Gucci Helle” because of her penchant for stylish dress.

The prime minister struggled in 2012, as she steered her sometimes volatile coalition through a tough program of tax and unemployment-benefit reforms, public spending cuts, and measures to balance the state budget by 2020. In the process, the Social Democratic Party plummeted in the opinion polls, and the opposition Liberals and far-right, anti-immigration, Euroskeptic Danish People’s Party surged. In March 2013 support for the Social Democrats fell to its lowest point since 1898, but the party suffered only minor setbacks in November’s local elections. The instability of the restive ruling coalition was underlined by Thorning-Schmidt’s need to carry out the second cabinet reshuffle of the year in December, involving four new ministers. Nonetheless, leading economists commended the government’s economic policy, and the Fitch credit-rating agency praised Denmark’s sound economic strategies, low public debt, and ongoing current-account surplus while confirming the country’s AAA credit rating. In July 2013 the last of the 750 Danish troops who were serving in a combat capacity in NATO’s International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan returned home, in effect ending a much-criticized 12-year involvement.

Thorning-Schmidt’s government was shaken in 2014 when investment bank Goldman Sachs was allowed to purchase an 18 percent stake in Denmark’s biggest energy company, the largely state-owned DONG Energy. The controversial move in January led to the withdrawal of the Socialist People’s Party from the governing coalition. Many had protested the U.S. bank’s plans for a $1.4 billion investment in the utility, an arrangement that gave Goldman Sachs special veto powers not enjoyed by other shareholders. The departure of the Socialist People’s Party led to the formation of a minority Social Democratic–Social Liberal Party government with control of only about one-third of the seats in the parliament. It also resulted in the sixth cabinet reshuffle of Thorning-Schmidt’s 29 months in power to date. To make matters worse, the Danish People’s Party emerged victorious in the European parliamentary elections in May, winning 4 of Denmark’s 13 seats with more than 26 percent of the vote, well ahead of the Social Democrats (3 seats).

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In mid-February 2015 Denmark was rocked by a pair of terrorist attacks that happened within hours of each other in Copenhagen. A gunman killed a filmmaker and wounded three policemen when he shot through the windows of a café–cultural centre that was hosting a panel discussion titled “Art, Blasphemy and Freedom of Expression” that included the participation of a Swedish artist whose published depiction of the Prophet Muhammad in 2007 had stirred controversy. Hours later another attack occurred outside a synagogue, where a member of the congregation who was providing security was fatally shot and two policemen were wounded. Thorning-Schmidt responded with a statement in which she said that the attack on Denmark’s Jewish minority was an “attack on all of Denmark.”

At the end of May, Thorning-Schmidt called for a snap parliamentary election to be held on June 18. The results were devastating for her governing coalition, which was forced from office. Although the Social Democrats won a larger percentage of the vote than any other single party (about 26 percent), the five-party “Red” coalition that Thorning-Schmidt led into the election finished with only 85 seats, whereas former prime minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen of the Liberal Party effectively headed a centre-right “Blue” slate that captured 90 seats in the 179-seat parliament. Anti-immigrant sentiment appeared to be at the root of the electoral response given the strong showing by the Danish People’s Party, which finished second with some 21 percent of the vote (the Liberal Party came in third with about 19.5 percent). In the wake of the defeat, Thorning-Schmidt resigned as the leader of the Social Democrats. She later served as CEO (2016–19) of Save the Children International, a nonprofit organization.