David Leonhardt has written a detailed article for the New York Times arguing that the Danish Social Democrats and their leader, Mette Frederiksen, could be a model for the center left throughout Europe and North America: “Over the past several years, there is arguably not a single high-income country where a center-left party has managed to enact progressive policies and win re-election — with the exception of Denmark.”

Leonhardt goes on to argue that Frederiksen’s party won the political space to carry out those measures by adopting a more restrictive immigration policy. The Danish experience deserves careful analysis in its own right, but I want to take issue here with the wider premise of what Leonhardt has written: the idea that Denmark is a unique example of success during the period since 2019, when Frederiksen contested her first general election as party leader.

In fact, there are two other West European countries where center-left parties have been reelected in that time frame after carrying out undeniably progressive policies: Spain and Portugal. Like Frederiksen and the Danish Social Democrats, the Spanish and Portuguese Socialists had to work with other parties to form a government. In both cases, an alliance with the radical left was the foundation stone for these successes.