YouSaid · the spoken record

Helle Thorning-Schmidt

lines on the record
65
first
2024-07-07
most recent
2024-07-07
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1
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podcast

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  1. “It's being negative about that because you need to focus in on what are the problems. A big welfare state like we have, where you basically tax people, we're the one of the highest taxed countries in the world, always competing with France to be the highest taxed country in the world. And if you have that high taxation, you also need to deliver world-class services to the elderly, to children, to everyone. And of course, that is the big problem, that we have pockets where we're not delivering that world-class service. And that will, as long as we have this high taxation, we will always struggle to actually deliver. And we have to have a constant machine to reform and become better, better delivering world-class services.”

    2024-07-07 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 84. Denmark's former PM on the power of centrist politics, fighting misogyny, and joining the Kinnock empire (Helle Thorning-Schmidt) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “Or something like this. Yeah, so it goes up all the time. So that is the system we created. So we are very good at creating before. Super smart. It's one of the best things we did for the Danish economy.”

    2024-07-07 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 84. Denmark's former PM on the power of centrist politics, fighting misogyny, and joining the Kinnock empire (Helle Thorning-Schmidt) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “I think we have exactly the same problems that everyone else has, and that's a demographic that doesn't add up. We have a good economy and have always been very good at making reforms. Like when I was leader of my party, one of the things we did was to make a big pension reform, which means that the pension age actually goes up every year according to our expectations.”

    2024-07-07 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 84. Denmark's former PM on the power of centrist politics, fighting misogyny, and joining the Kinnock empire (Helle Thorning-Schmidt) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “Do now in France make them responsible for what the general politics in a country, and that's also what we did in government.”

    2024-07-07 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 84. Denmark's former PM on the power of centrist politics, fighting misogyny, and joining the Kinnock empire (Helle Thorning-Schmidt) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “10 years, I basically had to move the party out of its comfort zone in terms of tax, in terms of the economy, in terms, but also in terms of how we spoke about that cultural meeting that I think the left has talked about in rosy terms, which is not always that rosy for people who live in it. I happen to come from the south of Copenhagen, which is the town where we have most immigrants in the 70s. We are like the town in the country that has had a lot of issues around this. So I knew from my own childhood and my own background that there were people that were questioning what's going on here without being racist and bigots. And we have to have a bridge to listen to what people are saying. And I think that's how you deal with the right wing. And then you also make them responsible. Hopefully that is what Macron is trying to.”

    2024-07-07 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 84. Denmark's former PM on the power of centrist politics, fighting misogyny, and joining the Kinnock empire (Helle Thorning-Schmidt) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “This is a big question because it's a UK question. It's a European question. You saw right after the European elections, I know your listeners know what goes on. Right after the European election, President of Commission von der Leyen, she said, she's like a big sigh of relief. Oh, the center was held. We are safe now. And I really felt that was a wrong reaction because it was also a big sign that the European right is awake, it's growing, and it's getting real influence in many big European countries. And what I rather think we should be doing is to think about what are those people worried about who vote for the far right. They're not all bigots and racists. Some of them are normal people that are just worried about some things and we need to understand what they're worried about. And that's what we start. When I came back and became the leader of my party, I was leader of that party.”

    2024-07-07 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 84. Denmark's former PM on the power of centrist politics, fighting misogyny, and joining the Kinnock empire (Helle Thorning-Schmidt) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “It is actually true. I mean, I lived the life that was, I mean, I think I'm the prime minister. I'm more shirts than anyone in the world. We didn't have, we stayed in the same house that we always did. We had security, of course, but I lived a very normal life.”

    2024-07-07 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 84. Denmark's former PM on the power of centrist politics, fighting misogyny, and joining the Kinnock empire (Helle Thorning-Schmidt) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “It definitely was. And the interesting thing about that series that it came before I was leader. And I help them a lot with the series, and they talk to me a lot, but it came out before I actually became prime minister. But in a way, it helped me because obviously I'm the first female leader of my party. I was the first female prime minister in the country. So it helped people envisage how you could have a female leader because there was a fictional series that showed that. So it was very interesting that the series helped me become prime minister. There's no doubt about it. And then it also gave fame to Denmark. I started giving this series as a box set, this is an old-fashioned thing, as a box set to different people. I gave it to Shinto Abu, who loved it. I gave it to Sarkozy's wife, who loved it as well. So we started using it in a way of promoting Denmark. And I'm an African leaders. It's very much soft power. I spoke to African leaders who had seen it. And it was just fun. It was a fun way to start a conversation because everyone asked.”

    2024-07-07 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 84. Denmark's former PM on the power of centrist politics, fighting misogyny, and joining the Kinnock empire (Helle Thorning-Schmidt) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “Was Prime Minister, I worked with all the parties extreme left, extreme right, and that is the big difference, that you know how people think about a lot of things and you are able to build those bridges.”

    2024-07-07 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 84. Denmark's former PM on the power of centrist politics, fighting misogyny, and joining the Kinnock empire (Helle Thorning-Schmidt) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “I do think you have a much clearer feeling for what everyone, how everyone thinks about things. I mean, I come from the suburbs of Copenhagen, but I know the country really, really well. And I always felt that whatever living room I came into in Jotland or wherever in the country, I would always be able to sit down and have a conversation with those people, understand their problems. And you just have a sense of how people live. And that means that it's much easier to build those bridges, have a conversation. One of the things I hope we will talk about is we were much earlier than anyone else in Denmark to actually find out how do you understand the extreme right? How do you understand the extreme left? And how do you get them into the tent and start working with them? And that has meant that we have so many coalitions.”

    2024-07-07 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 84. Denmark's former PM on the power of centrist politics, fighting misogyny, and joining the Kinnock empire (Helle Thorning-Schmidt) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “I do think you, I mean, I don't know. I haven't been Prime Minister, President in France wouldn't mind, but haven't, but...”

    2024-07-07 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 84. Denmark's former PM on the power of centrist politics, fighting misogyny, and joining the Kinnock empire (Helle Thorning-Schmidt) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “What is so different in Danish politics is that it's not, you're not less of a politician, you're not less principled when you do a compromise, when you actually go out of the door saying we are five parties doing this together, you have to constantly build bridges. And that's what is the big difference. And that's what, to be honest, I'm also missing in British politics.”

    2024-07-07 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 84. Denmark's former PM on the power of centrist politics, fighting misogyny, and joining the Kinnock empire (Helle Thorning-Schmidt) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “The big difference in a lot of Nordic politics is that we know how to be pragmatic and compromise. And that comes from a lot of different things. First of all, we don't have the first past-the-post system. We have a proportional representation, which means that just in a Danish parliament, and this is a small country we're talking about, we have now nine parties. When I was prime minister, I had eight parties. No one ever gets a majority. So when I was in government, I had a three-party coalition government. But we didn't even have a majority in that coalition. So every morning you wake up as a prime minister and literally think, how will I get my majority for this piece of legislation that I put forward? And that gives a sense that you have to make coalitions. You have to work in coalitions. You have to be pragmatic. You have to do compromises. You have to work with the outside world. So I think.”

    2024-07-07 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 84. Denmark's former PM on the power of centrist politics, fighting misogyny, and joining the Kinnock empire (Helle Thorning-Schmidt) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “It wasn't, it wasn't. I was always interested in Europe. My first political election was to be a European parliamentarian, which I was for five years. And then I started getting more and more engaged into the party situation, obviously extremely inspired by new labor and the journey you guys were on spoke a lot to you and Philip Gold when we went on our endless holidays. And I remember one day Philip said to me, why don't you do it one of our long dinners by the pool where the kids were doing their theater behind us? Why don't you do it? And that actually put a thought into my head that maybe I could go back and try to change my party so it could become electable again and win elections. And that's why I started thinking maybe I should go back and do it.”

    2024-07-07 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 84. Denmark's former PM on the power of centrist politics, fighting misogyny, and joining the Kinnock empire (Helle Thorning-Schmidt) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “I know. First of all, thank you for having me, both of you. It's great to be here. But looking forward to it, no, I think we made each other back in, I want to say, 92, 93, where I came over to have Christmas with the Kinnaks and obviously you guys were there with the kids. And everyone was so pissed so you had to pick me up in the airport.”

    2024-07-07 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 84. Denmark's former PM on the power of centrist politics, fighting misogyny, and joining the Kinnock empire (Helle Thorning-Schmidt) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source