Geelmuyden.Kiese

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LES MISERABLES
07.06.2009

We have met the next Prime Minister of Norway – on that I’ll wager my hat. But I’m not betting on Progress Party leader Siv Jensen taking over this year.

Political commentators struggle to understand the Progress Party. They attempt to define the party on a left-to-right axis. I can understand their frustration, because it can’t be done. Norwegian politics will not be defined in this way. Norway is a corporation. It defies right to left analysis. Norwegian politics must be interpreted inside-outside. The Progress Party is at its best when it sides with the outsiders.

To me, politics is about defining community. Politics is important because it is the only arena where the powerless are empowered. The rich have economical power, civil servants wield public power, but the weakest among us have no other power than what politics lends them. The crisis facing the parties of the political establishment is that they work better for the ones on the inside than for those who have wound up on the outside. The Progress Party is not a party for the dissatisfied. The Progress Party is a party for the powerless.

Formerly, Norwegian Labour was the party of the disempowered. Labour included the working classes. Labour laid down the groundwork for equal rights so that women could be included. But Norwegian Labour has failed to do the same for immigrants, the elderly, the ill or the minimum wage public employees. Together, there are enough of them to push Progress Party leader Siv Jensen into office when they make up their mind to do so. This will happen when the Progress Party has cleaned up its more excluding stigmatizing position. Siv Jensen will not be finished with the cleanup before the September election this year. As it stands today, the party has just too much hateful rhetoric for that.

But for the 2013 election, she can.

Hans Geelmuyden