Preben Bang Henriksen has been expelled from Venstre's parliamentary group and thereby from the party after refusing to promise to follow the party line, he said on Tuesday afternoon following a group meeting at Christiansborg, according to Nordjyske, borsen.dk and Ekstra Bladet.
He will continue in the Folketing as an independent, he would have preferred to stay in Venstre, Berlingske reported. "I'm sorry about that, because I've been a member of Venstre for many years and I've been in the Folketing for 15 years," he said.
The move follows Sunday's extraordinary meeting of Venstre's main board, where chairman Troels Lund Poulsen won backing for a rule that members who will not pledge to follow the party line in votes risk being expelled. The dispute stems from September, when five members voted against the so-called fertiliser law, fearing it would hit agriculture unnecessarily hard.
Søren Gade also voted for the fertiliser law and has since left the Folketing. Newly elected Amanda Heitmann and longer-serving members Annie Mathiesen and Peter Juel-Jensen voted for it too, but promised on Tuesday to follow the line from now on.
Henriksen first entered the Folketing in 2011 at the age of 57 after many years as a lawyer in Aalborg. He has chaired the Legal Affairs Committee and the Committee on Intelligence Services, and in 2021 he voted with eight other members against setting up an impeachment case against Inger Støjberg. In 2014 he was the first in Venstre's parliamentary group to publicly withdraw support for Lars Løkke Rasmussen.
He has no plans to seek another party, and under the constitution members of the Folketing are bound only by their own conviction.
Earlier coverage
- Venstre MP Expects Expulsion Over Party Line Revolt (27 Oct 2026)
- Preben Bang Expects Expulsion From Venstre Group (27 Oct 2026)