Danish PM fetes her ‘red prince’ husband for British election win

Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt on Friday congratulated her husband Stephen Kinnock on winning a Labour seat in parliament in Britain’s election.

“I’m so happy on Stephen’s behalf,” she told Danish daily Berlingske.

“He’s done so well and the result is really great for him. All the work he has put into it has paid off,” she added.

Kinnock, the 45-year-old son of Britain’s 1980s Labour Party leader and longtime European Commissioner Neil Kinnock, won a seat representing the coal-mining town of Aberavon in south Wales.

He has been dubbed a “red prince” in the British media, the term used for sons of senior Labour Party figures selected for safe seats.

Kinnock won 15,416 votes in Thursday’s election, far ahead of the UKIP candidate who garnered 4,917 votes and the Conservative candidate’s 3,742.

Thorning-Schmidt and Kinnock met at the Bruges College of Europe in 1993. Together they have two daughters.

Asked which of them would be doing the commuting, Thorning-Schmidt told Berlingske: “We both will, as we have for many years and we’ve always made it work.”

“I’ve always had a husband who works outside Denmark, and now he will do so in politics. This just means we will have even more to talk about, since we are both interested in politics,” she said.

Kinnock has previously worked at the British Council in Saint Petersburg and Sierra Leone, and as a director at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland. He has most recently served as a managing director at Xynteo, a business advisory firm that helps companies develop low-carbon growth.