Look who’s back! Lars Løkke Rasmussen to found new party

Former PM reveals ambitions to launch centrist party as an alternative to fill chasm between Red and Blue blocs

Apr 12, 2021

When Lars Løkke Rasmussen stepped down from his position as head of Venstre party in the wake of the lost General Election in 2019, Danish politics lost arguably the biggest politician in recent history.

Rasmussen had been Denmark’s PM from 2009-11 and then again from 2015-19 and had been the Blue Bloc behemoth as his position as the head of Venstre for a decade.

In fact, since Rasmussen stepped down, the Blue Bloc has been in disarray.

But the former PM is set for a comeback, following revelations that he intends to launch a centrist new party that seeks to fill the void between the two blocs.

A formidable ballast
Last year, he started a new political network ‘Det Politiske Mødested’ and now, following his participation in a reality series involving the crossing of the Atlantic in a boat, he dropped the new party hammer in his blog on BT tabloid.

“We are serious. There will come a new party that has ambitions to be a reasonable, pragmatic and non-dogmatic voice in the political landscape,” Rasmussen said.

“And one that can offer progress and change in the intersection between a Blue Bloc tormented by value politics and a Red Bloc stuck in a past view of the individual and state.”

Rasmussen didn’t unveil too much about a coming platform, but he did say that he would like to reduce business taxes to make Denmark more competitive on the global stage.

The former PM wouldn’t offer up any prospective name of the new party or who would be running to represent it in Parliament.

Before the new party can do that, it would require at least 20,100 voter declarations – a target that seems quite attainable given that ‘Det Politiske Mødested’ already has over 15,000 signups.