Bad mood in the Labor Party – The dream turned into a nightmare

Jonas Gahr Støre has had a mildly troubled start as prime minister. Small and large crises have been in line since election night, most of them self-inflicted; there is trouble in the Labor Party again, and he is still nowhere near succeeding with this autumn’s most important task, to get a state budget adopted.

It began ominously with a political wreck. After only a few days, it was over to the red-green alternative Støre had gone to the polls for. Suddenly it was quite obvious that the distance between SV on the one hand and the Labor Party and the Socialist People’s Party on the other, was insurmountable, something red-green voters had to apologize for not getting along. Plan B turned out to be a contourless city center platform that at key points did not differ significantly from the policy the Labor Party and the Socialist People’s Party had been working on for eight years. The impression was confirmed in the supplementary bill, which did not have room to reverse a number of antisocial and symbol-heavy cuts that the two parties had promised to rectify.

The first woman

The insensitive the neglect they would soon regret. Between galloping electricity prices, rising corona infection and a health care system on the verge of collapse, it brewed up a crisis of confidence in the Storting. Eva Kristin Hansen (Labor Party) had long been intended as the new Speaker of the Storting. The choice was so obvious that the party office did not bother to ask her about the commuter home, a situation which only six months earlier had led to Kjell Ingolf Ropstad having to resign as party leader and minister. It should have occurred to them when Hansen’s most important job was to clean up the mess.

Støre first had confidence in Hansen, then he eventually did not. This must be the case in politics, but it seemed as if neither Støre nor parts of the party understood the seriousness and thought it would blow over. In the wake of the debate over the Storting’s many privileges, Dagbladet was able to reveal that the Storting representatives are well supplied with holiday pay themselves; yes, double up. The disappointment over the lack of prioritization of holiday pay for the unemployed grew into armor after the revelation of the politicians’ own benefits. Wasn’t that exactly what the government had gone to the polls for? Now it should be ordinary people’s turn, no more to those who have the most from before?

This crushes ordinary people

The LO management moved out and demanded that the holiday money be returned to the budget. Støre’s old nemesis, Trond Giske, appeared in NRK Debatten and punished his own party for both holiday pay and cuts in disability allowances, while the party’s envoy remained defenseless. The government itself could have taken the credit for a visible change of course. Instead, it is forced into a dishonorable retreat.

A new President of the Storting is in place. At least an attempt could have been made to spin the election of Masud Gharanhkhani into a positive story; Norway’s second parliamentary president with a minority background, a rising star in the Labor Party. Instead, the impression left is that Støre worked his way down the list; several are said to have said no, and the wrecked vice-president, Sverre Myrli, is furious and thinks he is exposed to a game of power where old stories were drawn out to blacken him. Eva Kristin Hansen does not want to go in silence either. She feels deprived without it being proven that she did anything wrong, perhaps a strategy she has picked up at the dormitory in Trondheim. She does not get involved in a case that is about trust, but the reactions testify to the fact that the battle axes are not deeply buried in the Labor Party.

Must be treated as Nav clients

Støre needs hurt a happy news. Not least, he must get the budget in port without more crises. But here, too, the Labor Party is rooting for itself, by acting unnecessarily arrogant, setting short deadlines and complaining about progress. Audun Lysbakken was provoked when the government after a short time wanted to lift the negotiations up to the parliamentary leaders. In negotiations where the parties are far apart, it is not necessary to contribute to a bad mood.

Why does Sp get away with criticism so cheaply, some ask. Trygve Slagsvold Vedum is also the Minister of Finance. But it is Støre who is the boss, and it is the Labor Party that is still the Labor Party with the expectations that follow, and which he himself has helped to create. Voters’ forgiveness is often great and the memory short, but it is urgent for Støre to make a better first impression.

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