With Tuesday’s Danish election balanced on a knife edge, questions remain as to how conservative parties would agree to govern together in the event they can command a majority after the vote.
Denmark’s conservative or ‘blue bloc’ parties could have some serious negotiations to look forward to should they be in a position to take over government after Tuesday’s general election.
The leader of the centre-right Liberal (Venstre) party, Troels Lund Poulsen, has stated his preference for leading a “centrist conservative government”, but is likely to need the confidence of both the far-right and the centrist Moderate party to defeat incumbent Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen of the Social Democrats.
Polls on the eve of the election predict a very close outcome. A situation in which neither the left nor right takes an overall majority is possible, in which case the Moderates, who have placed themselves between the two sides, could get a decisive say.
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This means a so-called ‘blue bloc’ or right-leaning government could rely on the confidence of the centrist Moderates, led by former Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen.
Løkke has sounded positive on the prospect of working with the Liberals, telling broadcaster DR on Friday that he could “see more of my own politics in what Troels [Lund Poulsen] is saying” compared to Frederiksen.
However, the vast political difference between the Moderates and Denmark’s most far-right party, the Danish People’s Party (DF), could cause Poulsen a major headache even if he is able to muster a majority.
Moderate political spokesperson Jakob Engel-Schmidt on Sunday stated that the party would neither govern with DF nor make the far-right party’s leader, Morten Messerschmidt, minister in a future government.
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“Voters can rest assured. If you vote for us, you won’t get Morten Messerschmidt as a minister,” he told news wire Ritzau.
“The Danish People’s Party has refused to give its support to a government involving us, and we can’t go into government with the Danish People’s Party,” he said.
Poulsen has talked up the prospect of a “conservative centrist government” without the Social Democrats.
“I think it would be natural for parties like the Conservatives, Liberal Alliance and the Moderates to go into a government like this, but I won’t rule out either the Danish People’s Party or the Denmark Democrats,” he wrote in a newsletter, in reference to the latter two parties being on the far-right.
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However, DF responded by confirming it will not support any agreement that puts the Moderates back into government, where the party has been in coalition with the Liberals and Social Democrats since 2022.
“A vote for the Danish People’s Party is a vote for a Denmark without Mette Frederiksen and Lars Løkke Rasmussen in power,” Messerschmidt wrote on Facebook.
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Engel-Schmidt said the Moderates’ first choice would be a new centrist government with parties from both sides of the centre involved.
He called a government with the Conservatives, Liberal Alliance and Liberals “hypothetical”, noting the four parties would be well short of the necessary 90 seats needed for a majority, according to the latest polls.
While the Moderates want a centrist government and the Liberals want a centre-right government, Frederiksen has not given a clear statement on her own preference.
However, she frustrated left-wing parties when she said in a campaign speech on Sunday that she does not want to “go back go bloc politics”, calling instead for “collaboration and strong leadership”.