Norway election: Conservative Erna Solberg triumphs

BBC News ^ | 10 September 2013 | staff

[PapaBear3625]

Norwegian centre-right leader Erna Solberg is set to form a new government after Labour Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg admitted election defeat.

Ms Solberg described her win as "a historic election victory for the right-wing parties".

Her Conservative Party is widely expected to form a government with the anti-immigration Progress Party.

It is oil-rich Norway's first general election since attacks by a far-right extremist left 77 people dead in 2011.

[PapaBear3625]

I don't know how conservative Norway's conservatives are relative to what WE would consider conservative.

The Conservative Party is not that conservative by our lights, being for gay marriage and EU membership, while being moderately fiscally conservative.

The Progress Party, with whom the Conservatives must make a coalition, seems fairly free-market libertarian according to their wiki page

[ek_hornbeck]

The mainstream right in Europe is probably best exemplified by somebody like Angela Merkel and the Christian Democrats in Germany: pragmatic, willing to trim back welfare state excesses, but certainly not a free-market radical of any kind. I'm assuming that the center-right party in Norway is more or less along the same lines.

The European "far right" mostly focuses on cultural issues such as immigration restriction and maintaining the integrity of their society, as opposed to economic concerns or the types of social issues that often define the American right.

[JerseyanExile]

I think it’s pretty ironic that you use Switzerland of all places as an example of ethnic homogeneity.

[ek_hornbeck]

I think it’s pretty ironic that you use Switzerland of all places as an example of ethnic homogeneity.

Not at all. Sure, you have German, French, and Italian speaking people, but they share a common western European culture. Unless its immigration policy has changed drastically, Switzerland isn't overrun with Turks, Arabs and Africans to the extent that Germany, Holland, and France are.

[Impy]

The head of the more right-wing party that she is expected to bring into the government is a true friend of Israel.

The Progress Party, they actually lost seats, unfortunately. I wish they were heading the coalition but whudya gonna do, at least the left didn't win.