Denmark is not known for politically active billionaires. Yet when, in February, the Danish Social Democrats, under prime minister Mette Frederiksen, proposed a 0.5 percent annual wealth tax on the country’s richest 1 percent, the business response was both swift and furious.

Firms poured millions into advertising campaigns ahead of the March 24 general election. Billionaires and CEOs took to the press threatening to leave the country, while all the major employers’ organizations and the largest firms, like Maersk, issued dire warnings of massive job losses and investment slowdown.

The wealth tax proposal was part of the Social Democrats’ attempt at a pivot to the Left, focusing their electoral campaign on economic inequality and other economic justice issues, in order to win back some of the voters lost after four years in a historically unpopular centrist coalition with parts of the Right.
This pivot, however, seemed to come too late and lack credibility. On Tuesday, the Frederiksen government was sharply rejected at the polls.