Lars Løkke Rasmussen
Lars Løkke Rasmussen was prime minister of Denmark from 2009 to 2011 and from 2015 to 2019, and has been foreign minister since December 2022 in a government of the centre that he made possible by founding a new party, the Moderates, in 2022 after the Liberals he had led for ten years pushed him out, the third Rasmussen in a row to hold the office and the one the country calls Løkke. The first government, inherited from Fogh in April 2009, was the financial crisis, the Copenhagen climate conference of December 2009 that he chaired to a non-agreement in the small hours, and the retirement reform of 2011 that brought the early retirement scheme's end forward. There was the election of September 2011 that he lost to Thorning-Schmidt by three seats. The second, won in June 2015 with a party that had lost seats but a bloc that had won, was the refugee crisis of 2015, in which the government took out advertisements in Lebanese newspapers to say that Denmark was not worth the journey. There was the jewellery law of 2016 that let the police take asylum seekers' valuables above ten thousand kroner, and the burqa ban, the ghetto package of 2018 that doubled sentences in listed neighbourhoods. There was the tax on the pension of the Liberals' own voters that he had to withdraw, and a coalition from 2016 with the Conservatives and Liberal Alliance that ended at the election of June 2019, when the Social Democrats under Frederiksen took the office by adopting his immigration policy. He was born in Vejle in 1964, studied law at Copenhagen, and was county mayor of Frederiksborg at thirty-four. He was Fogh's interior and health minister and then finance minister, the architect of the municipal reform. His expenses, the hotel bills, the underwear bought on the party's card and the private flights, were the scandal of 2014 that the party forgave. The Moderates took nine per cent at the election of November 2022 and made him the kingmaker, and the government of Social Democrats, Liberals and Moderates that Frederiksen formed in December 2022 was the first across the centre since 1978. As foreign minister he has managed the Greenland crisis of 2025, when Trump said the island would be American one way or another, by saying no politely and often, and the defence budget to three per cent. He has said that the Americans are a friend who has to be told.
- Lived: 1964 CE – ?
- Nationality: Danish
- Roles: prime minister, politician
