– Today I stand before you and give my first national meeting speech as political leader. After a year that in many areas has been some real crap for our party, she says.
– We have, for open screen, taken a good bite of our part of the showdown with violations and sexism, which has taken up residence in our society for far too long. It has not been pretty. But necessary.
– We are not at the finish line. But we’re up and running. It has been hard. But it has far from been meaningless. I am proud of where we have reached. And I am grateful that you are still here, says Sofie Carsten Nielsen.
Last autumn, the Radicals took a sharp dive into the polls, which the party has not yet managed to repair.
It happened after the then political leader Morten Østergaard on October 7 last year had to resign.
The Radicals were one of the parties that took the lead in the fight against sexual abuse when the MeToo wave washed over Denmark last year.
However, the party itself proved to have major problems with violations.
Sofie Carsten Nielsen, who had been aware of infringement cases against Morten Østergaard, became political leader in October after a battle election against Martin Lidegaard in the parliamentary group.
However, it was not the beginning to calm down. Instead, a painful year followed for the party, where Martin Lidegaard, among other things, thought of starting a new party.
In January, both Ida Auken and Jens Rohde left the party in favor of the Social Democrats and the Christian Democrats, respectively.
It ended with a peace of mind when Sofie Carsten Nielsen made Martin Lidegaard deputy chairman in February.
In March, a report from the Kvinfo knowledge center concluded that the Radicals’ handling of sexual harassment cases in the party had been “inappropriate.”
And when this summer finally seemed to have calmed down a bit, the Radicals got another case on their necks in August.
From one day to the next, the party’s then legal spokesman, Kristian Hegaard, left politics after several cases of cross-border behavior against him emerged.
– We have been mocked and ridiculed many times in the past year, says Sofie Carsten Nielsen.
– In this connection, I can reassure the Prime Minister (Mette Frederiksen, S, ed.) That at times it has not been very pleasurable to go to work as a radical leader.
– But I did it anyway. And felt more radical than ever before, she says.