The short version
- Erna Solberg is celebrating 20 years as leader of the Conservative Party and has revenge plans after the general election in 2021.
- She wants revenge after a personal crisis and throws Jonas Gahr Støre out of the prime minister’s office.
- She points to four short-term goals and three long-term ones, which will contribute to that.
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From the wall at home in Bergen, she talks about a very concrete change of person that she knows will happen at home – and hopes that it will happen politically.
– The house has been red-green for far too long. Now it will be blue, she says and shows that they are testing colours.
– The choice is between two blue colours. I think this one will be a bit navy blue, she says and comes up with the following claim/goal/ambition:
– We will color the house and the country blue!
We sit on the terrace, in delicious Bergen early summer weather. The husband is in Oslo and the children are grown up and moved out, so she rules alone. Today, Thursday 9 May, the Queen of the Conservative Party celebrates that she has been leader of the Conservative Party for 20 years.
Here she reveals who is the coolest person she has met:
After losing the general election in 2021 and after the personal downturn of the times this autumn, she admits that there is an element of revenge in her will to fight:
We begin with the nightmare this autumn. E24 exposed the man’s share trading, which made her admit that she should have checked better what he had been doing behind her back.
– Bit strange
She acknowledges that it took time and that it would have been wonderful to rise again, by securing a civil majority at the general election next year.
– My biggest personal downfall during these 20 years was in the share cases last year, after all, the share case. Having it revealed that things have been going on behind my back, and having to acknowledge that it has had consequences for my competence. It’s good to have a few years behind you in politics when something like this hits you. I think many people probably wouldn’t have been able to stand it, she says.
– What do you say to the fact that many people in social media are concerned that it is not possible for your husband to move back into the prime minister’s residence if you become prime minister after the general election next autumn?
– I have to say that I think it’s a bit strange; that we should live separately. We want to be married to each other anyway. The key point is that he cannot trade in shares in the future. And he won’t do that.
– Is that enough?
– Yes, that’s enough. And we must be able to document that it does not happen.
The second revenge element concerns ensuring that Ap leader Jonas Gahr Støre is thrown out of the Prime Minister’s office.
– It cannot be assumed that I would very much like to make up for the election loss in 2021. There is no question of possibly rejoicing that Støre and Vedum will lose their jobs. The point is that I believe our policy is much better for Norway.
She does not like the focus on the personal.
– Therefore:
– Politics is my main driving force. I see both short-term and long-term challenges that must be solved to take Norway into the future, she says.
You can read her plans for Norway a little further down in the case.
Hope for those who will take over
She has no doubts about the biggest political downturn.
– It was losing the election in 2021, even though hardly anyone has managed to sit longer than eight consecutive years in government in Norway. Even Einar Gerhardsen had to take a break every now and then.
– Speaking of Gerhardsen: Next year you will pass him: He was party leader for 20 years.
– Huff, she says and laughs.
– Then there is only one left in front of you on the list.
– Who?
– Carl I. Hagen. He was party leader in the FRP for 28 years.
– I have no ambition to beat him.
Then at least those in the Conservative Party who have plans to take over for her know that.
Questions and answers
Who is Erna Solberg?
She is a Norwegian politician who has been leader of Høyre, a conservative political party in Norway, for 20 years. She has also been Norway’s Prime Minister from 2013 to 2021.
When Erna Solberg says that she wants to “color the house and the country blue”, she uses a metaphor to express the desire to change the political direction in Norway to the Conservative Party’s policy, which is often associated with the color blue. She talks both about painting her house in Bergen a blue color and about bringing the Conservative Party back to power in Norway.
Erna Solberg experienced a personal downturn when it was revealed that her husband, Sindre Finnes, had engaged in extensive stock trading at the same time that Erna Solberg was prime minister. This created a great public controversy.
Erna Solberg says she wants to prioritize measures that can increase income, such as improving the framework conditions for businesses and getting more people into work. She emphasizes the importance of being careful with the use of money and making the public sector more efficient in order to deal with financial challenges.
This article was created using AI tools from OpenAI, and quality assured by VG’s journalists.
Solberg says that both the politicians and the Norwegian people must accept that Norway is facing a dramatic change.
– We will change from something that is very profitable – oil and gas – to something that we don’t know will be profitable at all:
– We do not know what will become of the major business routes in Norway. I don’t think Støre addresses that at all. I think his government is not very forward-looking. That worries me. We will make the same adjustments in terms of climate as other countries, but they will not have to go through the transition from fantastic incomes from oil and gas.
– The MDG had a national meeting last weekend and were clear that your Conservative Party – and Labor – stand in the way of reaching the climate goals, because you protect oil?
– I believe that it is those who are only concerned with stopping oil and gas production, who stand in the way of reaching the climate goals.
– We don’t need to pick up more oil?
– There is still demand for oil in the world and we produce cleaner than others. What we have to do is to cut off the fossil fuel supply, not on the production side, but on the consumer side internationally. We have done that in Norway, in that most of the cars sold are electric cars.
She adds:
– With carbon capture and storage (CCS), production with fossil fuels will also be straightforward, because the carbon is then captured and can be stored in the North Sea.
She says she has a plan, a short-term one of four points and a long-term one of three.
– People and businesses have received worse advice. It’s not all the government’s fault, but their policies are making things worse. Taxes have been increased by 40 billion, Norwegian ownership and competitiveness have weakened, and increased political risk stops investments and new jobs. This could threaten our welfare in the future, she says.
– For the first time in ten years, over 250,000 Norwegians are on the health care queue. Waiting times have increased by two weeks on average since the election in 2021. At the same time, the government is restricting the use of private services, which lengthens the queues and means that people have to wait longer for help.
– One in three pupils does not read well enough, one in three cannot do maths well enough and one in five still drops out of upper secondary school. In addition, more students and teachers report more noise and increased insecurity. We want to invest in knowledge, learning and well-being, where this government’s biggest investment in schools has been a village school supplement, she says sourly.
– Crime is becoming more brutal and violent. The gangs and networks are more professional and dangerous, the offenders are getting younger and younger, and in the big cities even children are drawn into serious crime. At the same time, the police are being weakened and the government is prioritizing new offices in small places, over more people where the need is greatest. We must turn that around, including with more police and prevention.
She highlights three crucial challenges.
– Fewer must carry more. We are becoming more elderly and in need of care compared to those in working life.
– Norway is in the middle of a green transition where both business and industry have to cut emissions in order to be competitive and the growth impulses from the oil and gas sector become smaller.
– Government revenues are growing more slowly than government expenditureparticularly for pensions, defense and health and care.
– It is these long lines in politics that most of all motivate and trigger me, to want to make a comeback as Norway’s most powerful next autumn:
– When Norway has to spend so much money on defense and not least greatly increasing pension expenses in the coming years, then it must be prioritised. What do you want to deprioritize?
NM in tax relief
– We do not want the election campaign next autumn to become a short-term auction competition for new welfare measures. Even if we are in opposition, we can’t pretend that we can afford absolutely everything.
– That’s fine, but what do you want to deprioritise?
– The important thing is to prioritize what gives us income and how to get more people back into work. We will give the companies better framework conditions than today, which will enable them to contribute with increased income.
– You don’t say what you want to deprioritise?
– We have to work on streamlining the public sector. Then we have to remove the thresholds that prevent people from coming to work. It will be able to provide savings and more money in. And then there are cases where we have to hold back, as we have done with regard to the free dental reform. As we have said, we cannot prioritize now.
– You say that the government has tightened NOK 40 billion on the tax side and that you will offer tax relief. The government needs to do the same to win back voters from the center and the right: Will the election campaign be a national championship in giving voters the most tax relief?
– I don’t know if we risk such a NM, but we risk an election campaign where the left says that everything should be free or cheaper. I urge caution in spending money because we cannot spend more than our finances can handle.
– Subvert
– But you want to cut taxes at a time when you say we need more caution in spending?
– We must have net tax relief, especially for those with low incomes. We need it because it will provide increased income through the creation of new businesses and jobs.
She butchers the government’s economic policy towards business.
– The government has taken effective action to scare people away from staying and investing in Norway. You see it in the start-up environment and in international investors who now prefer to invest elsewhere. It is dangerous because we need to attract people and environments with expertise.
– Are you saying that foreign money now shuns Norway?
– No, but there are slightly fewer people on the Oslo Stock Exchange and fewer say they want to invest. Rather, they look to Sweden and other countries. If we fail to turn it around, it will undermine our entire welfare model.
The biggest victory
She has no doubts about what is the most important victory for the Conservative Party in her time as Conservative Party leader.
– Bringing about bourgeois cooperation that provided the basis for us to govern from 2013 to 2021. Before that, we had had a bourgeois majority in the Storting several times, without it ending in a bourgeois government. Now we have established that a bourgeois majority will give a bourgeois government.
AI
She says the Norwegian people are leaders in adopting new technologies.
– Do you use AI at home or at work?
– Not so much, I’ve tried quite a few and not everything is equally impressive. In the party, we use it, among other things, to summarize some documents. I am still concerned that politics must and should be human-made. But what is important is to understand AI and to know what challenges it presents.
She says it can be a wonderful tool.
– But as we see in the media, it can contribute to the fact that we can no longer believe in anything. The trust-based society is a human-based society. Therefore, rules must be made for AI and I am glad that the EU is taking it seriously, so that we can hang on.
