Finnish populist laments the lessons of office
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Two years ago Timo Soini was cock-a-hoop. His True Finns — a populist party espousing scepticism of the EU and a crackdown on immigration — were entering government after an election success and confident of making their contribution to an insurgent political revolution across Europe.
In an interview with the Financial Times, Mr Soini now glumly surveys the wreckage of those ambitions after the party imploded earlier this year under the pressure of office, tearing itself in two and leaving him and ministerial colleagues on the outside.
Inadvertently, the True Finns have become the prime exhibit on the continent for how populists might be tamed: by inviting them into power.
In an interview at the Finnish parliament Mr Soini admits mistakes were made. “When you are on the front line, you don’t go back, you fight. You must be unanimous in your fight. Nobody could do anything to us from outside the party but we were rotten inside, immature,” he says.
Mr Soini, the party’s leader for 20 years until this June and still Finland’s foreign minister, remains bitter over the split, caused by the election of a politician convicted of hate speech to head the True Finns. He and four other ministers quit the party and are now part of a splinter group called Blue Reform, which polls suggest has the support of just 1 per cent of voters.
Other populist parties in Europe are trying to learn the lessons from the True Finns’ break-up. “I’ve been looking carefully at the True Finns, and they have been very helpful in showing us what not to do,” says a member of the Danish People’s party.
Perhaps the biggest lesson is to be careful about the issues on which a populist party decides to make compromises. The True Finns shot to prominence with fierce protests against the first two bailouts of Greece — Mr Soini even keeps a “useless” 1899 Greek bond in his parliamentary office as a reminder. But one of their first acts in power was to back the third Greek bailout.
Mr Soini argued it was a necessary evil to show that the party could be responsible. But voters were less sure. “I’m not sure what they stand for now. I think it’s terrible to send more and more money to Greece,” says Jouni, a pensioner inside Helsinki’s Kamppi shopping centre.
The party was also hurt by the compromises it had to make during Europe’s migration crisis, which erupted a few months into their stint in government. The new leader of the True Finns, Jussi Halla-aho, who was convicted in 2012 of inciting hatred against an ethnic group for inflammatory comments on Islam and Somalis, is unlikely to be so conciliatory.
“If one wants to be in government, you would have to be much tougher. He wouldn’t make so many compromises,” says Erkka Railo, a Finnish expert on populism.
Mr Soini believes the True Finns lost their nerve. A comparison is with neighbouring Norway, where the populist Progress party also entered government and lost support initially. But they fought back in September’s national elections and have remained in power for a second term.
“[The True Finns under Mr Halla-aho] went too extreme, which is a bad mistake. We should have gone all the way for all four years,” he says. He adds that the new leadership is “highly incompetent and too extreme” and that the True Finns are now “not the party I founded”.
About half of the True Finns’ 38 parliamentarians — and all their ministers — joined Blue Reform. But the new party is facing the prospect of being wiped out in national elections in 2019. “I don’t understand why Timo and the others continue as ministers. They are committing political suicide,” says a prominent Finnish businessman.
By contrast, Mr Halla-aho has stabilised the True Finns at about 7 to 9 per cent support, albeit still well below the 18 per cent they recorded in the 2015 elections.
Mr Soini claims he has no desire to have a leadership role in Blue Reform, leading to rumours in Helsinki that he could soon seek a new role: “I’m an old horse. I’m not one to lead into a new battle. Twenty years is a life sentence in Finnish political life.”
But he insists that the decision for the True Finns to join the government in 2015 rather than just snipe from the sidelines was the correct one.
“We have paid a really tough price. I didn’t join the party to shout from the shadows. I wanted to show we were capable of being good ministers,” he says. “Unfortunately not all of the supporters understood that if we want to have no impact on anything we can stand in opposition for all our days.”
Comments