In January 2024, founder and party leader Vermund surprisingly announced that she had left the party, recommending the dissolution of Nye Borgerlige to its national executive, and that the party's parliamentary group had dissolved itself. The national executive announced that it would make a plan for the party's dissolution. Several local party activists opposed the plan, however, and an extraordinary party conference in April 2024 decided to carry on the party, choosing
Martin Henriksen as its new leader.
The youth wing of the party was
Nye Borgerliges Ungdom (NBU) until its dissolution in March 2024.
History
Founding and outside the Folketing
On 24 September 2015,
architect Pernille Vermund and
chemical engineer Peter Seier Christensen announced that they were in the process of establishing a new political party with the working title "We Conservatives" (Vi Konservative),[10][11] but instead settled on the name "Nye Borgerlige".[12] Both founders were former members of the Conservative People's Party for which party Vermund had served as a
Helsingør Municipality councilor from the
2009 municipal election until 2011.[12] On 20 October 2015, they launched the party
website and published a
political program (principprogram).[13] In an interview to B.T. on the same day, Vermund and Seier described their policies as "a mix of the
Danish People's Party and the
Liberal Alliance" and told that 360 people had joined.[14] The party was founded in response to the
then-government's handling of the
2015 European migrant crisis.[15][16][17]
On 21 September 2016, the founders announced that they had gathered the 20,109 signatures – amounting to one 175th of valid votes cast at the
previous general election – required to run in the next election. They held their first official press conference in
Copenhagen one day later, notably emphasizing the party's three "non-negotiable demands" (ufravigelige krav) as a prerequisite for backing any government; these were a total
asylum freeze, eviction of criminal foreigners after their first
conviction, and that foreigners staying in
Denmark must be able to support themselves.[18] The party's eligibility to run was officially approved by the
Ministry of the Interior on 6 October, when the party was assigned its requested election letter
D.[19]
On 12 November 2016, Nye Borgerlige held its first annual party conference in
Fredericia with about 400 attendees,[20][21] while at the time reporting 2,773 members with nine municipal councillors quickly changed their party affiliation to it.[22] Market research firm
Gallup polled in November 2016 and determined that the party would primarily obtain its voters from the Danish People's Party.[23] Running in 61 out of the 98
municipalities during the
2017 local elections, Nye Borgerlige secured 0.9% of the vote nationally, acquiring just one out of the 2,432 municipal councilors nationwide - the one awarded to incumbent councilor
Mette Thiesen in
Hillerød Municipality who had been elected for the Conservative People's Party
in 2013.[24]
2019 general election
In the election campaign before the
2019 general election, Nye Borgerlige was unexpectedly challenged by the sudden emergence of the
far-right party
Stram Kurs, but at the election on 5 June, Nye Borgerlige obtained 2.4% of the vote, equal to four seats, whereby the party entered the Folketing, whereas Stram Kurs with 1.8% did not surpass the 2%
threshold.[25] NB's first parliamentary group consisted of Pernille Vermund (
South Jutland), Peter Seier Christensen (
Zealand), Mette Thiesen (
North Zealand), and
Lars Boje Mathiesen (
East Jutland).[26] As the majority in Parliament shifted to the left at the election, the leader of the
Social DemocratsMette Frederiksen formed the same month a
minority government (
Frederiksen I) to which Nye Borgerlige would serve as an opposition party.[27]
Early in the election period, the party decided against custom to invest most of its funds in communication and not policy development, in a ratio described as "80/20".[28] Nye Borgerlige gained popularity and became well-known for its successful
social media strategy, especially on
Facebook.[29][30][31] In February 2021, it became, with officially 18,000 members, the Danish political party with the third highest membership count, succeeded only by the Social Democrats and Venstre.[32] Two years later, however, newspaper accounts questioned the party's official membership counts, quoting several former party activists reporting that they were instructed not to remove people not paying membership fees from the membership lists in order to create a higher membership number.[33][34]
In February 2021, the party got its highest single opinion poll to date, suggesting 11% of the general vote.[35] After its initial
surge in polling during the election period, the party's popularity began dwindling from early 2021 onwards, particularly following the launch of a new right-wing populist party named
Denmark Democrats headed by former minister
Inger Støjberg.[36][37] The
November 2021 local elections resulted in a nationwide performance of 3.6%, awarding the party 64 seats instead of the previous single one.[38] In the
June 2022 European Union opt-out referendum, Nye Borgerlige campaigned for a "no",[39] with 66.9% of voters voting "yes".[40]
2022 general election and first Vermund resignation
Leading up to the general election, widespread dissatisfaction among local party members were in August reported in the media, in particular on
Funen and
Zealand, because of the centralised decision-making concerning the choice of parliamentary candidates, where the national executive chose the leading candidates regardless of local support. The top management led to defections from local councillors and other party activists.[41][42]
At the 2022 general election on 1 November, the party received 3.7% and won six seats as the four original
MFs were re-elected in the same
constituencies along with
Mikkel Bjørn (
Funen) and
Kim Edberg Andersen (
North Jutland).[43] Thiesen left the party on 7 November due to an incident in which her boyfriend had exercised physical violence towards a member of Nye Borgerlige's secretariat, consequently becoming the fastest politician in Danish history to leave the party of their election.[44][45] She would later join the
Danish People's Party in February 2023.[46][47]
In the aftermath of the election, Vermund faced internal
critique for having made a campaign that was too vague and pragmatic, focusing on an excess of key issues and too little on
immigration policy.[37][48] Many party activists were also frustrated by the thorough top management of the party, and in particular the central hand-picking of parliamentary candidates.[37][49] The press secretary for seven years, Lars Kaaber, was dismissed on 24 November.[50] In December, a new
grand coalitionmajority government headed by incumbent prime minister Frederiksen, consisting of the
Social Democrats,
Venstre, and the
Moderates (the
SVM government) took office, to which Nye Borgerlige served as opposition.[51][52]
On 10 January 2023, Vermund issued a statement saying that she would step down as leader at the party's next annual conference and would not run for reelection to the Folketing. Vermund explained her resignation with a desire to get her "life and family back",[53] later stating that she leading up to the decision had begun feeling ill.[54] Most political observers pointed at Boje as her most likely successor as party leader, though some thought that Bjørn might also make a bid for the party leadership.[55][56][57] The two were seen as representing the liberal and the national conservative wings in the party, respectively.[58][59]
On 17 January, Boje announced his leadership candidacy, receiving support from Seier and Edberg but not Bjørn and Vermund, the latter having announced that she would abstain from commenting on the choice of her successor.[60] A week later, Bjørn left Nye Borgerlige for the Danish People's Party, citing internal dissension with Boje and a lack of belief in his abilities to lead.[61] In turn, Boje blamed Bjørn for putting himself before the party,[62] whereas Vermund criticised Bjørn for leaving his post prematurely and taking his seat to another party, having been elected for Nye Borgerlige with the lowest personal number of votes of all the party's parliamentarians.[63] Bjørn's defection was followed by those of the chairman and deputy chairman of the youth wing
Nye Borgerliges Ungdom.[59] In the end, no other candidates entered the race for chairman, ensuring Boje's unanimous election as party leader[64] on 7 February.[65]
Boje as chairman
Besides the election of Boje, the party conference on 7 February 2023 among six aspiring candidates elected local councillor Henriette Ergemann as new political deputy leader by 204 out of the 317 delegates' votes,[66] succeeding Seier who had announced his resignation in January.[67] After 13 days, however, Ergemann resigned following criticism of a number of controversial statements by her about
COVID-19 vaccines and political opponents.[68] On 6 March, she left the party.[69]
Some commentators predicted that the election of Boje would move the party towards a less pragmatic, less national conservative and more liberal and
protest party-like position,[59][70] though Boje himself stated that he would continue the political line of Vermund.[60] However, only 31 days after his election, it was on 10 March announced that the national had, the evening prior, unanimously chosen to dismiss Boje as party leader and expel him from the party due to disputes over remuneration and campaign finances.[71] Boje continued in the Folketing as an independent.[72] As a concomitant of Boje's exit, the party was set to lose 3.5 million
Danish kroner of its public funds, with effect after 12 months.[73]
After Boje
Following the expulsion, Vermund conveyed her willingness to once again take over as party leader[74][75] and to run in the
next general election.[76] The party decided to defer election of a new chairman and political deputy chairman to the next ordinary annual conference in October 2023. In the meantime, the organisational deputy leader Jesper Hammer together with the other members of the national executive took care of the chairman functions.[77]
During the week following Boje's expulsion, some 500 members, including several local councillors, left the party. Roughly 2,000 members altogether had left the party since the general election in November.[78] From the local election in November 2021 until March 2023, the party lost 22 out of its 64 municipal council members,[79] including all its representatives in the four biggest
Danish cities (Copenhagen,
Aarhus,
Aalborg,
Odense).[80]
On 4 April, Seier called in sick with
stress, effectively reducing Nye Borgerlige's number of active parliamentarians to two.[d][82][83] On 10 May, Vermund announced a more pragmatic strategy for the party, which included no linger insisting on its three main immigration policy demands as non-negotiable. According to Vermund, insisting on having these demands fulfilled as a prerequisite for supporting a right-wing government would not make sense given the parliamentary situation.[82] On 13 October,
Martin Henriksen, a former Danish People's Party MF who had joined Nye Borgerlige in June,[84] was appointed its leading candidate for the
2024 European Parliament election.[85]
Vermund interlude and Henriksen as chairman
At the annual conference of the party on 28 October 2023, Vermund was again officially elected chairman.[86] However, on 10 January 2024 Vermund surprisingly announced that she and Edberg had recommended the dissolution of the party to the national executive, and that they were as of then without party affiliation in parliament. The reason cited was an abundance of right-wing parties in parliament.[87] On 16 January the party's parliamentary group was formally dissolved,[88] with Vermund joining the
Liberal Alliance the subsequent day,[89] whose chairman
Alex Vanopslagh had before
Christmas privately invited her to do so.[90] Concurrently, many local party activists announced that they intended to continue the existence of the party, several of them pointing to Henriksen as a potential new party leader.[91] Nye Borgerliges Ungdom dissolved itself on 3 March,[92] while Edberg joined the Denmark Democrats on 19 March.[93]
On 16 April, on an extraordinary party conference 172 delegates out of 185 voted in favor of continuing the party's existence. Afterwards,
Martin Henriksen, a former
Danish People's Party MP who left that party in 2022, was elected new party leader, receiving 169 votes against 3 for his opponent Daniel Fischer.[94]
According to Nye Borgerlige's 2015 manifesto, the party combines "a classically conservative value-based policy with a borgerlig economic policy and an unambiguous resistance towards conventions and supranational agreements limiting Danish democracy".[95] It is in favour of Danish withdrawal from the
EU, a
liberal economic policy and a further tightening of immigration policy.[96] The party's self-professed five main principles are:[95][97]
Although the party supports Danish
NATO membership, in November 2023 it expressed opposition to additional funding for Ukraine in the
Russo-Ukrainian War, describing Islamic immigration as a greater threat to European security.[103]
^No English word encapsulates the full meaning of the Danish singular borgerlig. It is the usual Danish term for non-socialist parties in general, and the country's right-of-centre parties in particular. Imperfect translations include 'bourgeois' or 'civic'.[8] In English, the party's name is often loosely translated to the New Right despite the party not having an official English name.
^Svend Pedersen is also credited as a co-founder, but never played a central role in Nye Borgerlige, and quickly left the party again.[9] In 2022 he rejoined as an active member and was elected to the party's national executive, but was expelled on 30 March 2023 for
racist and derogatory remarks.[9]
^In
Denmark, when a
MF calls in sick, the MF's first substitute – the person in the MF's constituency who for the same party as the MF was the fewest personal votes away from entering the Folketing – is entitled to hold the MF's seat until this requests return. However, since the person with the second most votes for Nye Borgerlige in
Zealand Constituency was Henriette Ergemann,
Seier Christensen decided, in accordance with law, to abstain from officially calling himself in sick and instead simply stopped attending work in order to avoid Ergemann from entering the Folketing.[81]
^Rasmussen, Dorte Møller (25 September 2015).
"Konservativ afhopper stifter nyt konservativt parti". Sjællandske Nyheder.
Archived from the original on 23 May 2023. Retrieved 17 July 2022. Endnu et nyt parti ser nu dagens lys. Vi Konservative kommer partiet til at hedde, og stifterne er Pernille Vermund, Snekkersten, Peter Seier Christensen, Rungsted og Svend Pedersen, Valby.
^
abKosiara-Pedersen, Karina (20 April 2023).
"Nye Borgerlige". Den Store Danske. Retrieved 28 September 2023. Arbejdstitlen på det nye parti var 'Vi Konservative', da Pernille Vermund og Peter Seier Christensen (f. 1967) brød med Det Konservative Folkeparti i september 2015, men det endte med navnet 'Nye Borgerlige'.
^
abKosiara-Pedersen, Karina (20 April 2023).
"Nye Borgerlige". Den Store Danske (in Danish).
Archived from the original on 23 May 2023. Retrieved 23 May 2023.