Editorials

The Irish Times view on the Finnish general election: a shift to the right

Sanna Marin was seen to handle Covid and the Ukraine war well, but her opponent Petteri Orpo won on a conservative economic platform calling for lower borrowing

National Coalition Party chair Petteri Orpo, the election winner, and Social Democratic Party SDP chair and outgoing Finnish prime minister Sanna Marin during an event following the Finnish parliamentary election. Photograph: Heikki Saukkomaa/Lehtikuva/AFP

Mon Apr 3 2023 - 21:10

Finland’s general election has produced a definite shift in the country’s political complexion, even if the make-up of the next government still remains unclear. The left-leaning coalition of Sanna Marin, bringing together five parties all led by women, has lost its majority. The task of forming a new government will now fall to Petteri Orpo, whose liberal conservative National Coalition Party (NCP) gained 10 seats to become Finland’s largest party.

Marin, who was appointed prime minister in 2019 after only four years in parliament, was a political icon for progressives and feminists. She was buoyed up by assured handling of the Covid crisis and decisive action to bring Finland into Nato in the wake of the Ukraine invasion, a policy which enjoys overwhelming popular support. Finland officially becomes a Nato member today.

The election, however, was not fought on Nato, or on Marin’s competence, but on the economy. Marin and her left-wing coalition allies consistently defended high social spending, while Orpo’s conservatives argued that Finland’s deficit was unacceptably large and that public expenditure, after the economic shock administered by disruption of trade with Russia, now needed to be severely reined in. Many voters clearly agreed.

The social democrats emerged from the election with a very small increase in seats. But support for their green and radical left coalition allies collapsed, the latter party paying the price for a revolt by some of its deputies over Nato membership, with the loss of five of its 16 seats.

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Orpo’s conservatives now have the choice of two main coalition options, neither of them without problems: a centrist one embracing the social democrats or a right-far-right arrangement taking in the populist Finns party, which has also increased its seats. The first option would require a difficult compromise on public spending, while the second, involving cohabitation with a party whose anti-Europeanism and nationalism often verges on racism, sits uncomfortably with the philosophy of Petteri Orpo’s mainstream liberal conservatives. Coalition talks could be protracted.

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