After exactly six months as Høyre’s group leader in opposition in Tromsø, Anne Berit Figenschau threw in the towel. She is stepping down from political positions to focus on a new job and career as regional director of Innovation Norway. It’s not really that surprising.
It started with a disputed mayoral candidacy, and continued in a chaotic election campaign that ended in a stinging election defeat. When the manger is empty, the horses bite, and the election defeat was followed by an inflamed conflict in the party’s local council group.
When she notified the party group and the public a few weeks ago that she was stepping down as group leader, and justified it by saying that she had been given an ultimatum about the leadership job by her employer, the Swedish Tax Agency, she met with great understanding. It is easy to understand that she chose to keep a good managerial job rather than complete a full-time job outside the red-green heat of the town hall.
Then it emerged that at this time she was in a recruitment process for the job as director of Innovation Norway. On Thursday, she had her first day back at the Swedish Tax Agency. She spent large parts of the day telling and explaining why she is quitting.
Although it undeniably looks strange, especially since she stated that she almost went back to work to “take one for the team”, in order to keep a state leadership position in Northern Norway, there is really nothing ludicrous to say about the timeline from what we know so far. She had until May to decide whether she wanted to continue as group leader and give up her management job at the Tax Agency. She had to notify the group when she did it, and did not know then whether the job at Innovation Norway would be hers.
Then questions can still be asked about Figenschau’s motives and motivation. Shortly after she was elected group leader, according to her own statement, she had the framework clarified by her employer. She knew this would come, but says herself that she would give the job as a politician a chance. It wasn’t so new and foreign that she had to test it to find out if she wanted to be in it, she has, after all, been a finance councilor before.
Figenschau took the job as group leader in the autumn in order not to lose face. It is questionable whether half a year in the role was enough to prevent that. Those who did not believe in her in their own party will probably think that they have had their suspicions confirmed, regardless of how legitimate her exit was. The suspicion that she was not, or is, someone sincere politician, she just wanted to rule the city, be the mayor.
This is how the conversation went when the municipal council group was to be constituted in the autumn. Figenschau shouldn’t wear it that she just wanted the mayor’s necklace, that she was someone who couldn’t stand the gray days, didn’t bother to “take the crappy job”. So then she did.
This also happened through a controversial and somewhat unusual process, where she “coupted” the position of group leader at the first meeting, before the rest of the group was constituted. It’s a bit strange, really, because it was only natural that the party’s top candidate would become group leader if she herself wanted to. The fact that she felt she had to “secure” the role says quite a lot about her position in the party – or at least her own perception of what reason she stood for.
It is interesting that taking the group leader job, for herself and for the party, became an important parameter for Figenschaus character. For her political opponent, on the other hand, Gunnar Wilhelmsen, no one would hold it against him for half a second if he refused to be opposition leader. He would probably also have been forgiven if he had come up with “something clever” to escape life as a bench toil in the municipal council.
Figenschau resigns after a solid effort as opposition leader in the past six months, well helped by a mayor who struggles greatly with his own credibility after gigantic deficits and constant revelations about what he knew, and when. Nevertheless, it is the maneuvers in the party and the lack of political results that will remain as her political legacy.
No one doubts that she has a big and beating heart for the city, but the impression, especially among a number of right-wing people and right-wing voters, has been that she has not quite known how to turn her beating heart into practical Conservative politics. Not to say “classic Conservative politics”.
Some have wondered if she is in the right party, all that time almost all the issues on which she has distinguished herself as a politician have been well within the red-green half of the track. In housing policy, it has been about those who do not get into the housing market, rather than cheering for developers. It’s been about a hacking workshop to keep the boys in school, from the leading figure from the party who is associated with draining the school of practical subjects.
Figenschau gives up a party weary after defeat and years of internal strife. No one in the Right is crying for Anne Berit. She probably knew it herself. It is not just at the town hall that there have been ups and downs in the team.
Now many party members hope that peace will descend on the Conservative Party, and that they will – finally – be able to rally around a candidate before the next election, and finally take power from the Labor Party in 2027.
A peaceful Tromsø Right? I won’t believe it until I see it.
