Election night for Nye Borgerlige (NB) was supposed to be a joyful event.
The right-wing party had gone up 3.7 percentage points compared to the previous general election and held six mandates in Parliament.
Then … the lort hit the fan.
Now, just six days after the election, NB stands to lose one of its mandates following Mette Thiesen’s decision to leave the party and become an independent.
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From votes to violence
It all began on election night when a man was escorted out of the party’s election event after throwing beer in the face of another guest live on camera (see video in link).
Days later, it emerged that the man who was escorted away was the partner of Mette Thiesen, who had just won election to Parliament again.
Then it surfaced that Thiesen’s partner had knocked a man down at the event and sent him to the hospital. That man, it turned out, had previously been in a relationship with Thiesen.
Apparently, Thiesen’s partner had threatened the man before – even accosting him in his office in Christiansborg – and she had been told he was not welcome at NB events.
Despite that, Theisen brought him along to the election event – a decision that she says she regrets.
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Keeping the mandate
NB boss Pernille Vermund has stated that the party was due to meet to discuss Theisen’s future with the party after she refused to “take responsibility for solving the problem”.
But before that could happen Theisen announced that she had left the party and become an independent … taking NB’s mandate with her, much to Vermund’s chagrin.
“I think it’s a shame and dishonourable to the NB voters who voted for her just a week ago on our party list,” Vermund wrote in a party newsletter.
According to one expert, Aarhus University professor Helene Helboe Pedersen, Theisen’s departure is the quickest following an election in history.
She received 4,357 personal votes in the election last week.
