Let’s start with a little history lesson. In the 1980’s, Carl I Hagen took over Fremskrittspartiet (Progress party (FrP)) and took it from a tiny protest party to a rightwing (in norwegian terms) populist party that earned representation in the parliament.
The party took enough voters from Høyre (Right) in the 85 elections so that neither Høyre with its traditional allies Senterpartiet (Center party (mostly representing Farmers and rural areas)) and KrF (The Christian people’s party), nor Arbeiderpartiet (Workers Party (AP)) could form a majority government. The conservatives formed an uneasy alliance with FrP to form a minority government propped up by FrP’s 2 representatives. In 86 FrP suddenly dropped its support and then conservative government fell. AP took over and controlled the government for a majority of the time up until recently. FrP meanwhile drifted further and further to the right, after a brief flirt with libertarianism, becoming a party essentially fueled by resentment towards immigrants and taxes. Classic rightwing assholes in other words. The conservatives meanwhile harbored a lot of resentment, so much in fact that up until recently they would not formally admit them into any government alliance.
However, in the 2010’s FrP’s steady ~15%± share of the vote has made them impossible to ignore and they had to be admitted, if the conservative’s would ever form a government.
Queue the latest situation in Norway. There has been a situation where refugees and asylum seekers has come to Norway, become Norwegian citizens and then joining the Syrian conflict on ISIS’s side.
There has been debates on how to deal with it. AP and their allies Sosialistisk Venstreparti (socialist Left party (SV)) and MDG (the green environmentalist party) agreed that Norwegian citizenship could be stripped from these ISIS terrorists, but only after it has been processed through the courts with all the appropriate appeals. Høyre and FrP on the other hand wanted the process of stripping citizenship from people to be an administrative affair handed by the ministry of justice, with no court interference. The proposition by Høyre and FrP fails, and the minister of justice from FrP, Listhaug, gets furious. She posts on facebook a comment on how the Left is cuddling terrorists and are more concerned about terrorist’s rights and not the safety and security of the country. Since AP was the sponsor of the summer camp at Utøya and the youth wing of AP was the victim of the wort terrorism attack in the history of Norway, the pushback was immediate. The post also included a picture whitout the proper permissions. After the pushback, Listhaug doubles down on her original post.
At this point the 3 centrist parties who are also part of the governing coalition have had enough and announce that they will support a vote of no confidence against Listhaug. All parties who supports the no confidence vote, will allow Listhaug to serve as the head of another ministry, just not Justice. The prime minister of Norway, Erna Solberg, comes out in support of Listhaug and states that the organization of the government is up to the ruling coalition and if the vote goes through, then the government will step down. There is no provision for a new election until this cycle runs out, so if the vote succeeds, then AP will form a minority government.
SP and Venstre (named Left for historical reasons, but is a conservative environmentalist party) has stated that they are still on board with the vote of no confidence. The vote is tomorrow and KrF is still deciding what to do. It doesn’t help that Listhaug has stated that KrF is just a bunch of back-lickers (or words to that effect). As of now, it seems that KrF is leaning towards breaking up the government.
This vote is a huge deal for 2 reasons. It is the first real pushback in Norway against the rot that is the creeping Trumpism and the toxic politics that follows. It is on the march everywhere, even in norway, but the pushback there has been swift. Hopefully they succeed.
Second. If the vote succeeds, it signals an important realignment in Norwegian politics. The traditional center block, who normally has been tilting towards Høyre, now will tilt towards AP instead. If this happens and Høyre reacts similar to how they did when FrP sabotaged them, the path to a conservative goverment in Norway suddenly became way more difficult.
As Rachel Maddow keeps saying “stay tuned”.
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