Solberg falters in the belief in a new majority government

It’s still the dream. But Prime Minister Erna Solberg acknowledges that it can be difficult to get all four bourgeois parties together again.

– “I think the most important thing is that we can collaborate on politics and content. And I’m pretty sure we can do that. But if everyone is in government? No, it may be difficult,” says Erna Solberg in an interview with NTB before Friday’s national meeting in the Conservative Party.

The Prime Minister and the Conservative leader acknowledge that for “some” it may be better not to be in government now.

But the old dream of a bourgeois four-party government is not quite dead yet.

– “No, it’s not. It takes time,” says the Prime Minister.

Believes majority government is best
After leading minority governments in several different variants and a majority government that fell apart after only one year, the Prime Minister still believes that a majority government is the best.

– “Not because it is easy in the government. It is more demanding in government. But I think it gives the best governance,” she explains.

At the same time, there is not necessarily such a big difference between the different constellations, according to Solberg. It is the same parties that must agree anyway.

– “It has been my philosophy from day one,” she says.

– Regardless of who is in government, and who is outside government, it is the sum of four parties’ policies.

FRP rattles with the sabers
Last weekend, the Progress Party held a national board meeting. It was stated that the Progress Party will continue to hold the position after the election in 2021 that the party will not support a government of which it is not a part of.

According to party leader Siv Jensen, the national government was also clear that the FRP “has no appetite” for entering a new government with KrF and the Liberal Party.

– “At the same time, we recognize that it is the voters who will put together Parliament. If we are to go into government, it is about support and breakthrough,” she told NTB.

Waiting for clarification
Solberg believes that what the FRP must now clarify is whether the party wants a bourgeois government.

– “They will probably experience that the voters will ask where they place themselves in the political landscape, in the same way as the voters ask all of us about it,” she says.

For now, Solberg will be sitting. And the FRP is prepared to negotiate with the government parties about the state budget this autumn.

Warns against picking up speed. When the program committee in the Conservative Party presented its first draft of a new party program this week, it was portrayed by some commentators as poor in the news.

But Solberg will not agree that the Conservatives have run out of ideas after seven years at the helm.

– It is the continuation, further development and direction that is important. It’s just that when you’re up and running, it can be perceived as little new.

Solberg points out that political projects such as including more people in the workforce are so long-term that they can take decades to complete.

– “We have a tendency in Norway to think that it should accelerate so fast, and that news items should come out all the time. But in the long-term, major structural changes in Norwegian society, it is politics over many years that will contribute to that,” she says.

– “We can not be part of that tempo thing in Norway where new things have to come all the time.”

© NTB Scanpix / #Norway Today