Borgen-esque crisis leaves Danish government in turmoil

Denmark's Socialist People's party has quit the ruling centre-left coalition amid discord over plans to sell a stake in state-controlled Dong Energy to Goldman Sachs and other investors.

The other two parties in government backed the sale but the Socialist People’s Party has remained split on the issue.

After more than a year of infighting, party leader Annette Vilhelmsen today resigned from the government and withdrew the party's six ministers from the 23-member cabinet, in a plot line that would not be out of place in the popular Danish TV drama, Borgen.

The former Social Democratic prime minister Poul Nyrup Rasmussen last week described the deal as a "catastrophe".

A recent opinion poll showed 68 per cent of Danes were opposed to the sale and thousands of protesters gathered outside the parliament last night to voice their anger over the deal.

Ms Vilhelmsen’s departure weakens prime minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt’s coalition.

Nonetheless, she said it would stay in power as a two-party minority government because it still has the support of the socialists in parliament.

The Danish parliament’s finance committee approved the sale of a 19 per cent stake in Dong Energy, the world’s biggest operator of offshore wind farms, to Goldman Sachs for 8 billion kroner (€1.1 billion).

The deal is intended to boost the ailing finances of Dong Energy, Denmark’s largest energy company.

Bloomberg