Jacob Christensen

Let us for the sake of argument assume that Anders Fogh leaves for NATO (or somewhere else) and Lars Løkke takes over as prime minister. In a Danish context, he will be unusual in two ways:

First, he has a background in local politics as deputy mayor of Græsted-Gilleleje¹ and later Frederiksborg County. The only previous Prime Minister to have been a mayor was C. Th. Zahle (Prime Minister 1909-1910 and 1913-1920 and mayor of Stege 1911-1913) – and that was back when mayors where appointed by the government, not locally elected. Poul Schlüter (PM 1982-1993) served as deputy mayor in my hometown Gladsaxe in the early 1970s after making an unsuccessful attempt at defeating Erhard Jakobsen.

Second, he will be taking over has heir presumptive. Believe it or not, this is highly unusual in Danish politics – between 1953 and 1968, the Social Democrats had no fewer than four Prime Ministers but as it was, there was no ordered succession. If Hans Hedtoft had lived and had had his way, it is not impossible to imagine that Jens Otto Krag had been Hedtoft’s chosen successor sometime during the 1960s. Hedtoft could have been another case as he was Th. Stauning’s chosen successor as party chairman, but due to the German occupation, Hedtoft could not become PM until 1947.² As it was, Stauning bypassed a couple of generations in promoting Hedtoft who was 30 years his junior.

Update: Factual correction about Løkke Rasmussen’s position in Græsted-Gilleleje.

1. Apologies for making LLR mayor of Græsted-Gilleleje, but he was a profiled deputy back in the early 1990s [↩]
2. For non-Danes: Stauning died in 1942 and was succeeded by Vilhelm Buhl after the Germans had forced Hedtoft to resign from his post. [↩]