The Labor National Convention gives us more of the very thing that voters don’t want

The determined applause does not convince anyone that Labor is riding a wave of enthusiasm.

But the relief that the national meeting took place peacefully and without personal conflicts is also a small victory.

The problem is that it is hard to see any new political movements emerging outside the National Assembly hall.

Labor is in crisis with voter turnout averaging 18.7 per cent in the polls in May. It’s a miserable history, and the distance of 31.5 percent to Høyre is enormous. It is particularly the so-called ‘purple voters’ who have turned their backs on Labour, those close to the center who are likely to vote Conservative like Labour.

The fundamental problem for these voters is how unpredictable the Ap/Sp government is in taxes and fees, and remarkably, many of today’s newspapers have articles advising people of wealth to pack their moving bags ahead of a revised state budget – fearing that the government will introduce an exit tax that will force expats to pay tax on accumulated gains that they have not yet withdrawn.

The point here isn’t whether it’s clever or not, but that we’ve been given a tax policy so unpredictable that almost anything can happen – eg, temporary/permanent taxation (writing off what doesn’t apply) to the employer, an extraordinary tax on payroll More than NOK 750,000.

A purely politically boring national meeting

Stripped of rhetoric and concerted applause, the Labor national meeting was dull in purely political terms, marked by concessions. For example, the party is keen to increase the proportion of those who complete secondary school, while at the same time the party wants to remove a measure that has already worked – the absence limit.

Another example is the decision to create and share. The party seems to want strong business development combined with fair distribution, but the word tax is not mentioned once in this document. Sounds like nice words in an uncontroversial package.

Read more: The decision to create and share

The same applies to the decision of the municipalities to change the city and the country. Here, too, there are many good words, such as “reliable municipalities”, but not a word about the most troubling thing, the municipal structure. Voters are unlikely to get mad that Labor will “Enhancing the role of the provincial council as an active component in regional development».

Labor tends to make guarantees, but is less efficient at ensuring that they become a reality. At this national meeting, the party says it wants to Implementation of a Youth Guarantee for everyone under the age of 30, helping to ensure that young people who need it receive close and individual follow-up from NAV.

collect in bin

The Labor Party’s national meeting is a rally in Ban, marked by relief rather than excitement over new policies. Without new policy measures, the result is that the party offers voters more of what they don’t want.

The biggest disappointment is energy policy, as electricity prices are not going to fall in the foreseeable future. The solution offered by Labor is to develop new, climate-friendly energy. This is all well and good, but for electricity prices in Norway to be different and lower than those in Europe, approximately 40 billion kilowatt-hours per year is needed (that is, a 25-30 percent increase in Norwegian energy production).

It certainly won’t happen before the municipal elections this fall or before the next general election in two years. For the party to agree to such a non-binding settlement effectively pushes the problem under the rug. Electric customers will notice.

The problem is in both politics and people and controversy

The Labor Party’s problem is in both the people, the politics and the controversy. With Jean-Christian Vestre and Tonji Brenna joining the leadership of the party, the party gets the necessary reinvention and renewal. The criticism of Kjersti Stenseng before the national meeting is actually a criticism of party leader Jonas Gahr Støre, and shows that there is great discontent throughout the party.

When it comes to controversy, Ap politicians are mostly interested in talking about what happened under the previous government, rather than telling how Norway will improve with Labor’s policies.

And to bring politics to an end: the National Meeting of the Labor Party was not a workshop of political ideas, but a workshop of conciliation that ensured inner peace.

And now there are only a few days left for the party to pump new billions of oil into an already overheating economy, with interest rates and price increases as a result. If it is accompanied by an exit tax, as many lawyers believe, it will be difficult to emerge as a stable and reliable ruling party to the Purple voters.