The Great Nordic Thread

[Aboa]

Fully expecting PS to be getting 15%> of the vote in the end.

I hope so but am sceptical. Many supporters were left disillusioned by the party's time in government, even though those who led the party back then are now in Blue Reform.

You hope Putin becomes stronger in Finland?

Halla-aho is not particularly pro-Russian though

[Aboa]

Relevantly Finnish magazine Seura published a survey about attitudes on foreign leaders today, on the right are attitudes of women:




Supporters for PS and Christian Democrats stand out from others in regards to both leaders 47% of PS supporters and 40% of Christian Democrats have favourable view on Trump while 26% of PS supporters and 19% of Christian Democrats have favourable view on Putin.

[Aboa]

The party started out in 2007 as the New Alliance, a very Macronista-style party. Two of the founders were MEP; one Conservative in EPP and one Social Liberal in ALDE. By 2009, the party had completely collapsed and two of the three founders had left the party, which the remaining founder Anders Samuelsen turned the party into the Liberal Alliance. They were now primarily focused on right-wing economic reforms. In the 2009 EP campaing, the young student Benjamin Dickow seemed quite EU-positive, although wanting radical reforms of the budget (stop spending on CAP etc.), and the party was in an electoral alliance with Liberals and Conservatives. The party was so far from getting a seat, so I'm not sure they even thought much about where to sit, but ALDE would have seemed logical. As the party started to re-establish itself, it became more Eurosceptic. The focus was still on cutting costs and bureaucracy, but they also started to use the terms of sovereignty and self-determination. So in the 2014 EP election, the party deemed itself so far from Liberals and Conservatives that they ran on their own. When asked, the party said they would prefer a new group of somewhat Eurosceptic liberals, but that was never going to happen. They had some contacts with the AECR, so they would probably have joined ECR. In the 2015 EU justice opt-in campaign, they campaigned for no. However, since entering government in the end of 2016, the Euroscepticism has been toned down. They have decided to run in an electoral alliance with the Liberals and Conservatives at EP 2019, so in that way they are back among the standard pro-European centre-right parties. This makes it harder to predict where they will end up. With British Conservatives out of ECR, that group is probably less attractive for them, but neither EPP nor ALDE is a fantastic fit either. I guess their campaign answer will be the same:"We hope to build a new group".

Well they wouldn't be the first somewhat badly fitting Nordic party to join ALDE.

[Aboa]

whatever happened to that Finnish Liberal Party plan that was supposed to come out of the woodwork?

Liike Nyt? Nothing much supposedly recruiting candidates for next parliamentary election, they are  to announce whether they participate next month. Two independent groups in Municipal Councils have joined them and according to Harkimo they are talks with ten other groups.

If they decide to run candidates, they won't be registering a party but instead run as independent candidates (which requires collecting 100 signatures) in an electoral alliance.

[Aboa]

Which government does Finland currently have, and is its majority as unnecessarily large as always?

Centre-NCP-Blue Future which due to breakup of Finns Party and couple of defections now has uncomfortably slim majority of 104-96 which might come back to bite them when (or if) parliament votes on social, health care and regional reforms later this autumn.

[Aboa]

In a rather bizarre episode, an MP for the Finns Party, Timo Vornanen, was recently arrested for an altercation outside a Helsinki nightclub where he allegedly pointed a pistol in the direction of a group of people and then fired a "warning shot" into the ground. The gun was legal, but you're not generally permitted to carry one with you. Ironically, Vornanen was a police officer prior to his election.

Expelling an MP is not easy. It would first require being sentenced to imprisonment (including a suspended term) with the appeals process completed. Only then would the parliament be able to to expel him with a two-thirds majority. In the meanwhile I would expect him to be suspended from the parliamentary group.

It turned that the reason behind the shooting was an earlier fight between member of the group being shot at and Vornanen over who would get to sit next to pair of 18 and 19 year old girls for whom Vornanen (who is 54 and married) had been buying drinks throughout the night.