In a move that has sent shockwaves through the salons of Whitehall and the gin parlours of Fleet Street, Denmark’s Mette Frederiksen has finally assembled a government. The process took approximately 137 days, which is roughly the same amount of time it takes the average British civil servant to approve a request for a new stapler. The UK, ever the ambitious suitor, is now eyeing a Nordic trade deal as a ‘model’ for future relations. Because nothing says ‘sovereignty’ like copying the homework of a country whose national dish is pickled herring.
The Danish coalition, a kaleidoscope of factions ranging from the Social Democrats to the Social Liberals to the Socially Inept, has been cobbled together with the sort of frantic desperation usually reserved for a man trying to assemble IKEA furniture without the instructions. Frederiksen, a woman whose face suggests she has seen the future and it involves a lot of committee meetings, now presides over a government that promises to be as stable as a unicycle on a tightrope.
Meanwhile, in the UK, trade negotiators are poring over the Danish model with the intensity of a cryptographer decoding a message from the Queen. The logic, presumably, is that if a country with 5.8 million people and a lot of windmills can thrash out a trade deal with the EU, then surely the UK, a nation of 67 million with a proud history of queueing, can do the same. This is, of course, the same logic that led us to believe we could build a bridge to Ireland in three years.
The proposed ‘Nordic model’ would involve a series of sectoral agreements, which is fancy jargon for ‘we’ll make it up as we go along’. The agricultural sector, for instance, would be expected to embrace free trade while simultaneously adhering to a set of regulations so labyrinthine that even the Danes, masters of bureaucracy, might balk. British farmers, already reeling from the loss of EU subsidies, are reportedly ‘cautiously optimistic’, which in farming terms means they’ve taken to drinking heavily.
But the real prize, the holy grail of this whole charade, is the fisheries agreement. Because nothing says ‘global Britain’ like a fight over herring quotas. The UK has historically claimed sovereignty over its waters, but now that we actually have that sovereignty, we seem to have forgotten what to do with it. The Danish model offers a solution: we can argue about it in a series of annual meetings while both sides slap tariff after tariff on each other’s cod. It’s a system that has worked perfectly for the EU for decades, so why not adopt it wholesale?
Of course, no trade deal is complete without a nod to the service industry. The UK, a nation of baristas, bartenders, and tax advisers, is keen to export its expertise. The Danes, on the other hand, are less enthusiastic about importing our version of customer service, which consists of a half-hearted ‘alright?’ and a shrug. But there is hope: the two sides have agreed to a mutual recognition of qualifications, meaning that a British doctor can now practice in Denmark as long as they can pronounce ‘Rødgrød med Fløde’.
In the end, this whole enterprise is a game of smoke and mirrors, a theatrical performance designed to distract the populace from the fact that no one has any idea what they’re doing. The Danish government, fresh from its marathon formation, is a perfect example of this. It is a coalition built on compromise, which is a polite way of saying that everyone is slightly unhappy. And the UK, desperate for a win, is now holding up this shaky edifice as a model for its own future.
So raise a glass of aquavit (or gin, for those of us with taste) to the new Nordic model. It may be messy, it may be incoherent, and it may taste faintly of pickled herring. But it’s ours. Or at least, it will be, once the lawyers have finished arguing about it. Cheers.
