The Great Nordic Thread

[Lasitten]

What, are the "Reds" near of getting a MP in Norway? Aren't they like old-way dogmatic communists?

Are they getting votes from the most left-wing voters of Socialist Left?

[Lasitten]

As I understand it Rødt is more dogmatic than Enhedslisten and has been really bad at attracting young people?

Really? I had the impression in the opposite way.
So the "real" Communist party of Norway isn't any kind of player?

I have only met people from Rød Ungdom and I have the image that they have an active youth wing which is able to attract young people, not as much as the Socialist Ungdom, but still.

[Lasitten]

Socialist Left has been very pragmatic while in government, so there is room for a "pure" socialist alternative to their left. I am actually surprised they aren't doing better.

I'm kind of suprised of the same thing in Finland. The fact that the Left Alliance makes a lot of compromises and really pragmatic policies in the cabinet hasn't resulted in the rise of parties on it's left-side like the Communist Party of Finland. They try to hit us with everything they have but the popular support isn't coming up.

Finland even had a kind of cabinet crisis after the mid-term examination of cabinet program. They choose to lower the corporate tax by 4 percents to 20% (which is lover than the corporate tax in Sweden). At the same time they renewed the taxation of dividends. After the examination the leader of the Left Alliance announced that the cabinet made a mistake and the new dividend taxation is going to open a backdoor in taxation for big corporations. After the other parties first bashed him and stated that what's made is made the cabinet made a patch in the dividend taxation.

The Left Alliance threatened to leave the cabinet if the dividend taxation would be fixed. And even this new "fixed" taxation system is going to be too much to swallow for many of the activists and supporters with the drop in corporate tax.

Left Alliance is going to have a party convention next June and it's going to be interesting because there's a lot of pressure and displeasing on the party's policies in the cabinet.

[Lasitten]

The Center Party has raised as the number one party in the gallups from it's collapse in and after the elections 2011. Seems that the new leader was a good choice.



What's interesting is also that the National Coalition Party lost is number one position which is have kept almost continuous  from 2007. The mid-term examination of the cabinet program also seems to be heave burden for the parties in the cabinet, especially for the social democrats who seem to came down a lot.

The gallup in english.

The Left Alliance has a nice grown especially because of the fact that the leader of the party was  the one to demand for the re-evaluation of dividend taxation.

[Lasitten]

I presume the Liberals are among the 1,1% for Others. That's pretty bad for the heirs to the good old Liberal Peoples Party. Why so low? 

The has been no strong tradition of really strong liberal party in Finland. The Finnish Liberal party was effectively killed when it lost its sole MP in the elections in 1995. After that has been only minor parties which haven't been able to get people elected. The newest try is this "The National Progressive Party" which doesn't seem be able to secure the needed 5 000 names. That's really funny because even the Communist Workers' Party – For Peace and Socialism was able to re-enter the party register it was dropped, because it was unable to secure any MPs in two elections.

The liberals in the Finnish political parties are traditionally concentrated in the National Coalition Party and in the Green.

[Lasitten]

I presume the Liberals are among the 1,1% for Others. That's pretty bad for the heirs to the good old Liberal Peoples Party. Why so low? 

The has been son strong tradition of really strong liberal party in Finland. The Finnish Liberal party was effectively killed when it lost its sole MP in the elections in 1995. After that has been only minor parties which haven't been able to get people elected. The newest try is this "The National Progressive Party" which doesn't seem be able to secure the needed 5 000 names. That's really funny because even the Communist Workers' Party – For Peace and Socialism was able to re-enter the party register it was dropped, because it was unable to secure any MPs in two elections.

The liberals in the Finnish political parties are traditionally concentrated in the National Coalition Party and in the Green.

Okay, I didnt know LPP lost representation that early. They renamed the party to the Liberals in 2000, and I thought this party still existed. Is it dissolved now?

Yea, the Liberals as a political party were dropped from the party register in the 2007 and after this they're unable re-register their party. In the elections 2011 they had a deal with Pirate Party that the candidates would run in the list of Pirate Party. After the elections the Liberals changed itself to a political think tank and political organization and some of them started the National Progressive Party -project.  

You can understand the condition of Finnish "liberals" if they're not even able to get 5 000 names for their party...

[Lasitten]

Yes, thats sounds truly miserable. Why the " " around the word liberals?

Because in my eyes and as Ethelberth  pointed out most of these liberals who are not members of already existing parties are more libertarians than old-school liberals like the Liberal Peoples Party.

[Lasitten]

Wou, from the Guardian

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A video about it and a best picture:

[Lasitten]

I think we have the same thing in Finland when the SDP is trying to get the conservative working class voters back from the right-wing populists by saying things like "when in Rome, act like a roman" and trying to avoid socially liberal themes like gender neutral marriage and immigration. This is of course more common among the old SDP actives than in the younger wing.

[Lasitten]

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[Lasitten]

In Finland the Left Alliance has announced that it will leave the government over disagreements on the new budget. Now only five parties are left in the government which still has a majority in parliament.

Never got why they even wanted/needed to join. I suppose it was the SDs not wanting to be Swamped by the right (they've still got the Green League, mind)

Because the best way to change things is from within the goverment?

The next big question for the government is the Fennovoima's nuclear plant. They changed the builder to Russian Rossatom and the greens think that the change is so major that they want to have a completely new processing on the issue and to vote for it in the parliament - and so exit the government.

[Lasitten]

Here you see what happens when xenophopic right-wing populist party which labels itself as "working class party without socialism" attacks the unions in the cabinet at the same time with refugee crisis.

[Lasitten]

Interesting to see whether the Finns Party will surge back up now. It really is difficult for these anti-migration parties to go into government. Most often it will be with standard centre-right parties, and if they can't convince them to radically change migration policies, most attention will be on economic policies where many of their voters will not be superhappy about right-wing policies.

Many commentators wait now that many of the active in the party are now leaving it because they see Halla-Aho and the new leaders as too right-wing and count them selfs as part of the "vennamolainen" anti-elite continuum. Some minor city councilors have already left the party because of this.

[Lasitten]

First YLE (public broadcaster) poll after the split of the True Finns. And they're going down.



PS = True Finns
UV = "New Alternative"

I think we're going to see people hopping back to the True Finns from New Alternative.