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Danish government: Rasmussen backs coalition with traditional rivals

The leader of the centrist Moderate party, Lars Løkke Rasmussen says he says a potential coalition involving his party and traditional rivals the Liberals and Social Democrats as an ‘excellent’ basis for a new government.

Danish government: Rasmussen backs coalition with traditional rivals
Lars Løkke Rasmussen and Jakob Engel-Schmidt of the Moderate party as talks to form the next government continue in Copenhagen. Photo: Ida Marie Odgaard/Ritzau Scanpix

Rasmussen commented on the potential outcome after talks on Thursday, which focused on climate, environment and conversion to green energy.

“That would actually be a majority government. It shouldn’t be much smaller if we want to have a majority, but this would be an excellent basis,” he said.

READ ALSO: Have talks to form new Danish government gone quiet?

Rasmussen is in favour of a centre coalition involving parties from the traditionally opposing ‘red’ and ‘blue’ blocs or left and right wings.

A government including the Social Democrats, led by incumbent Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, and the Liberals (Venstre), led by Jakob Ellemann-Jensen, would fit with this.

While Frederiksen also wants to work across the centre, the Liberals rejected such a coalition during the election campaign, saying they wanted a more conventional ‘blue bloc’ or conservative government.

Ellemann-Jensen now appears to be coming under pressure from his own party and other conservative parties to reconfirm his position.

That comes after suggestions he could be willing to work with Frederiksen after previously saying he “didn’t trust” the incumbent PM as a result of the 2020 ‘mink scandal’ for which her government was strongly criticised and received official rebukes.

A coalition between the two parties and Rasmussen’s Moderates – which have not declared alignment with either bloc or specified a preferred PM – would have 86 seats.

That would give a one-seat majority in the 179-seat parliament if the four North Atlantic mandates from Greenland and the Faroe Islands are not included in the calculation. The North Atlantic mandates usually fall 3:1 in favour of the red bloc.

The three parties took the three largest vote shares in the November 1st election.

However, an agreement between the parties does not appear to be particularly close.

Both Ellemann-Jensen and Rasmussen have described the current talks as being more informal in nature than full negotiations.

A national congress in the Liberal party this weekend could help the party to form consensus over whether to change its approach to a potential government with Frederiksen, according to Rasmussen.

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POLITICS

Support for Denmark’s Liberal party hits record low in new poll

Support for Denmark's Liberal Party has hit the lowest level ever recorded since the polling company Voxmeter started measuring party support back in 2001, indicating it may have lost its position as the main party of the right.

Support for Denmark's Liberal party hits record low in new poll

Just 7.7 percent of respondents said they intended to vote for the party in a poll carried out for the Ritzau newswire, showing the party’s support almost halved since the 2022 election, which it received 13.3 percent of the vote.

As recently as the run-up to the 2015 general election, the party received the support of 22 percent of voters in one Voxmeter poll, challenging the Social Democrats for the title of Denmark’s biggest party. 

The Liberals have been struggling in recent years, with the party’s former leader, Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen, leaving and launching the rival Moderate party, and the party’s former immigration minister, Inger Støjberg, launching the Denmark Democrats after being expelled from the party.

Støjberg’s party received the support of 9.9 percent of voters in the poll, showing its charismatic leader now ahead of the party that expelled her. 

Torsten Schack, the Liberal party’s political spokesperson, told Ritzau it was too early to write off the party’s chances in the 2026 election. 

“There is no doubt that this is not the best poll for the Liberals, but history shows that this can move quickly in Danish politics, and there are no elections until 2026, so until then we will continue to generate solid results for centre-right supporters in the government,” he told the newswire in a text message. 

But it is the libertarian Liberal Alliance party, as the only centre-right party in opposition, which is challenging the Liberal’s position as the main, government-bearing party of the right, winning the support of 16 percent of voters in only the second time it has polled so high since it was founded in 2007 by MPs from the Social Liberal and Conservative Parties. 

The Social Democrats were still the largest party in the poll, with the support of 20.9 percent of voters — down from a recent high of 35.8 percent in May 2020, in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic. 

They were followed by the Socialist Left party with 13.7 percent of the vote. 

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