Lars Løkke Rasmussen: Denmark’s pipe-smoking kingmaker who cleans his teeth with soap

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’s general election with a smile on his face – and a pipe in his mouth.Lars Løkke Rasmussen, the two-time prime minister whose Moderates party is not aligned with the country’s left or right-leaning political blocs, is poised to play a central role in any coalition deal reached in the coming weeks.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 “come down from the trees” and join him on the centre ground.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.Lars Løkke Rasmussen speaks to the media at his party’s election celebration. Photograph: Rasmus Flindt Pedersen/EPAAt the height of Denmark’s geopolitical drama with the US in January, Rasmussen, the foreign minister in Mette Frederiksen’s centrist coalition, went to Washington 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’s tensions with Donald Trump.Rasmussen’s party secured 14 seats in Tuesday’s elections, significantly fewer than his former coalition partners, but by refusing to take part in old-fashioned “bloc” politics, he has effectively become kingmaker.While he is unlikely to be prime minister, although it should not be ruled out– he is likely to come out of talks with another powerful ministerial position and a government of his choice.“No government can be formed without his at least tacit approval,” said Rune Stubager, a political science professor at Aarhus University. “So 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’t want to be part of. I can’t really say just how far he is willing to go in that direction.”Lars Løkke Rasmussen serves hotdogs at an election campaign event at Copenhagen central station. Photograph: Thomas Traasdahl/EPARasmussen, 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 “live and breathe for politics and power” and was skilled at both the substance and tactical side of it, Stubager said. “A cunning power player, if you will.”A large part of Rasmussen’s appeal is his carefully cultivated “man of the people” 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 – “I think I’ve become caffeine resistant” – and sometimes brushed his teeth with hand soap. “Then you want coffee afterwards. It’s a way to wake up,” he said.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.Another picture on his account shows him waving and walking while smoking his pipe. Some followers noted the look and compared him to Britain’s wartime leader. “Lars Winston Løkke Churchill,” wrote one.