{"id":48438,"date":"2026-03-25T17:47:13","date_gmt":"2026-03-25T17:47:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/48438\/"},"modified":"2026-03-25T17:47:13","modified_gmt":"2026-03-25T17:47:13","slug":"lars-lokke-rasmussen-denmarks-pipe-smoking-kingmaker-who-cleans-his-teeth-with-soap-denmark","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/48438\/","title":{"rendered":"Lars L\u00f8kke Rasmussen: Denmark\u2019s pipe-smoking kingmaker who cleans his teeth with soap | Denmark"},"content":{"rendered":"

At the end of a long, gruelling night for the biggest parties on the right and left, there was one veteran of Danish politics who came out of Tuesday\u2019s general election with a smile on his face \u2013 and a pipe in his mouth.<\/p>\n

Lars L\u00f8kke Rasmussen, the two-time prime minister whose Moderates party is not aligned with the country\u2019s left or right-leaning political blocs, is poised to play a central role in any coalition deal reached in the coming weeks<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Clearly enjoying himself, and still carrying his pipe, Rasmussen, 61, urged the leaders of the Social Democrats and the liberal Venstre party on Tuesday night to \u201ccome down from the trees\u201d and join him on the centre ground.<\/p>\n

It was a dramatic turnaround for a political veteran whose fortunes were looking decidedly uncertain at the end of last year, when polls showed support for the Moderates had plummeted. Then came the Greenland crisis.<\/p>\n

Rasmussen with Greenland’s foreign minister, Vivian Motzfeldt, left, in Washington for a meeting with JD Vance and Marco Rubio in January. Photograph: Mads Claus Rasmussen\/Reuters<\/p>\n

At the height of Denmark\u2019s geopolitical drama with the US in January, Rasmussen, the foreign minister in Mette Frederiksen\u2019s centrist coalition, went to Washington<\/a> to meet the US vice-president, JD Vance, and the secretary of state, Marco Rubio. He was pictured afterwards smoking a cigarette and fist-bumping the Danish ambassador, and has since been credited with helping to successfully cool Copenhagen\u2019s tensions with Donald Trump.<\/p>\n

Rasmussen\u2019s party secured 14 seats in Tuesday\u2019s elections, significantly fewer than his former coalition partners, but by refusing to take part in old-fashioned \u201cbloc\u201d politics, he has effectively become kingmaker.<\/p>\n

While he is unlikely to be prime minister, although it should not be ruled out\u2013 he is likely to come out of talks with another powerful ministerial position and a government of his choice.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo government can be formed without his at least tacit approval,\u201d said Rune Stubager, a political science professor at Aarhus University. \u201cSo he decides what side will get his support, or whether he wants to create a crisis by insisting on a centre coalition that the others don\u2019t want to be part of. I can\u2019t really say just how far he is willing to go in that direction.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lars L\u00f8kke Rasmussen serves hotdogs at an election campaign event at Copenhagen central station. Photograph: Thomas Traasdahl\/EPA<\/p>\n

Rasmussen, who was prime minister from 2009 to 2011 and again from 2015 to 2019 and has been a fixture of Danish politics since he was 22, seemed to \u201clive and breathe for politics and power\u201d and was skilled at both the substance and tactical side of it, Stubager said. \u201cA cunning power player, if you will.\u201d<\/p>\n

A large part of Rasmussen\u2019s appeal is his carefully cultivated \u201cman of the people\u201d persona. In a recent interview with Euroman magazine he said he smoked in bed when he had a sore throat or was sick, consumed excessive amounts of coffee \u2013 \u201cI think I\u2019ve become caffeine resistant\u201d \u2013 and sometimes brushed his teeth with hand soap. \u201cThen you want coffee afterwards. It\u2019s a way to wake up,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

During an election debate featuring his rivals Troels Lund Poulsen and Frederiksen, he posted a picture of himself with a goat on his Instagram feed, wishing them a good debate and eliciting a stream of goat emojis and comments declaring him the Greatest Of All Time.<\/p>\n

Another picture on his account shows him waving and walking while smoking his pipe. Some followers noted the look and compared him to Britain\u2019s wartime leader. \u201cLars Winston L\u00f8kke Churchill,\u201d wrote one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At the end of a long, gruelling night for the biggest parties on the right and left, there…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":48439,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[27,26],"class_list":{"0":"post-48438","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-denmark","8":"tag-danmark","9":"tag-denmark"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@dk\/116291072323763114","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48438","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48438"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48438\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48439"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}