When Mette Frederiksen (Socialdemokratiet, S) and Troels Lund Poulsen (Venstre, V) last debated face to face in a prime ministerial duel, we wrote that the veil between the two would-be prime ministers had fallen.
On Monday night, it was yanked up off the floor and hurled out the window.
The campaign’s final party leaders’ debate turned into a bruising exchange, with energy and security, pig production, immigration, and the question of what happens when the election is actually over all on the agenda. It sparked fireworks, and out of the smoke stepped two figures:
Lars Løkke Rasmussen (Moderaterne, M) and Mette Frederiksen (S).
That is the assessment of Elisabet Svane, Politiken’s political analyst, who as usual has parsed the leaders’ debate – probably for the last time this year.
The expected chaos
»The final debate of this election campaign showed that Mette Frederiksen (S) and Lars Løkke Rasmussen (M) are still the two standing at the very center of the struggle for power. They have fought over it before; both of them, with a slight shift, have come to see the appeal of broad governments across the center; and they read politics the same way.
Even though she has irritated him to no small degree, while he along the way has seriously tested her patience, these are two people who will always be able to work together in some form.
They were also the ones who brought a bombshell on the last day of the campaign: he with talk of becoming a royal mediator, she with an ultimatum demanding a state ban on pesticide spraying.
But whether Lars Løkke Rasmussen can manage to get Mette Frederiksen and Troels Lund Poulsen to cooperate is more doubtful after tonight’s debate. Too much porcelain has been smashed on the floor during the campaign; Socialdemokratiet and Venstre have used every dirty trick in the book against each other; and even if he didn’t say it out loud, Troels Lund Poulsen has, little by little, edged himself pretty far into a blue bloc whose majority now looks like something that briefly wandered by sometime in December. Before it evaporated again.
Troels Lund hasn’t renounced anything at all, but if Lars Løkke Rasmussen is going to get Troels Lund Poulsen and Mette Frederiksen onto the same team, he will need the patience of a saint.
As for Lars Løkke Rasmussen, his proposal for a royal investigator, which is hardly straightforward either, has put him squarely at the center of the campaign, and he could be central to the coming government negotiations. As someone no one can get around. Royal investigator or not.
That suits him just fine.
What kind of government it will give Denmark – and when – remains unclear.
Now it is entirely up to the voters«.
Coupon society or stagflation?
»Rising gasoline and diesel prices are a very good example of this campaign. We talk about the prices; several parties are ready with either checks or lower taxes or a higher commuting deduction – what Mona Juul (Konservative, K) called the coupon society.
But we have not talked much about the war in the Middle East, which is the reason for the higher prices, where the U.S. attack on Iran has closed the Strait of Hormuz and thus disrupted supplies. Until now.
In general, foreign policy has played a very small role in the campaign, even though in several polls it has ranked at the top when voters were asked what mattered most. Top politicians also say across the board that when they meet voters, they talk about Trump, Ukraine, and Greenland, but get remarkably few questions about schools and pensions.
That has frustrated both Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen (S) and Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen (M). And they were also the ones who talked about Iran. Mette Frederiksen even went a step further, speaking about fears of both stagnation and inflation, the so-called stagflation.
Meanwhile, Morten Messerschmidt (Dansk Folkeparti, DF and Inger Støjberg (Danmarksdemokraterne, DD) and Lars Boje (Borgenes Parti BP) were down to earth. They were the ones who argued most clearly for lower taxes on cars that run on fossil fuels«.
The truths were laid on the table
»One of the truths of this campaign is that DF does not want to make Lars Løkke Rasmussen (M) a minister. They said it before the campaign, they repeated it during the campaign, and it was repeated again tonight.
Løkke tried to say that DF had been his parliamentary base. It was – but Messerschmidt didn’t buy it. Because that was before he became party leader. A somewhat sophisticated argument, which Messerschmidt explained by firing back at Løkke, saying that he himself just changes parties when he can no longer be chairman.
Another truth is that Mette Frederiksen (S) and Troels Lund (V) have talked themselves away from each other over the course of the campaign. Their respect for one another has clearly eroded during the campaign. That was clear again tonight.
He talked about making Denmark richer, and that she didn’t want that – while she attacked him for the parties he would need to bring along if he is to gain power. But what made the strongest impression on viewers wasn’t so much what they said. It was their body language. He is clearly genuinely angry with her and provoked by her. She is more relaxed, but she also constantly makes sure to jab at him. It has escalated since the first duel, when they were still feeling each other out.
They don’t do that anymore. Now they swing hard. Hard enough that mouthguards might come in handy«.
Mette Frederiksen brought a new ultimatum
»It wasn’t only Lars Løkke Rasmussen who brought a bombshell to the closing debate. Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen did, too. While Venstre’s Troels Lund Poulsen, who up to now in the campaign has been under heavy pressure on the agriculture debate, went on the offensive in these final hours. He criticized pig production and said he agreed with Lars Løkke Rasmussen’s proposal for a four-party deal on pigs. A kind of green tripartite deal with a twist.
Løkke’s bombshell detonated here in the newspaper. He wants to be the royal investogator and try to form a broad government across the center. But Mette Frederiksen, who until now had only immigration policy as her nonnegotiable demand, now had another ultimatum as well: a national ban on pesticide spraying to protect drinking water. Before she, bordering on brazenly, thanked the parties to her left – especially Alternativet – for putting drinking water and pigs on the agenda«.
No big animal on the blue savanna
»Alex Vanopslagh (Liberal Alliance, LA) has a feel for semantics and also knows how to deliver a piece of cheek with a smile. As when he said that he doesn’t really see Denmark as a company that needs to be richer. But he was perfectly clear that after three weeks of campaigning, the words “richer” and “Denmark” have become synonymous with Venstre’s Troels Lund Poulsen.
Those words have become Troels Lund Poulsen’s mantra, and Vanopslagh then tweaked it by saying that he wants to make Danes richer. Not Denmark.
The small words show that the relationship between Venstre and Liberal Alliance is a bond of trust without an excess of it. One thing is that they often fight over the same voters – plenty of parties do – but for Liberal Alliance and Venstre, it is also, more fundamentally, about ideology and strategy. Venstre is no longer the big animal on the blue savanna, because the truth is that there is no longer any truly big animal on the blue savanna. Just a herd of roughly the same size.
That is what Venstre has returned to: a blue herd, where not everyone has been equally thrilled about the prodigal son’s homecoming. Liberal Alliance, for example, still has not wholeheartedly endorsed Troels Lund as a prime ministerial candidate – they are simply afraid it will cost them votes.
There isn’t much trust in that«.
