EP186 · Society · first published 2023-04-05
The Government After Sanna Marin | Jari Hanska | Negotiator 186
Jari Hanska of Iltalehti, lead anchor of the Politiikan puskaradio podcast, unpacks Finland's April 2023 election two days after the result — on the same day Finland became a NATO member. The sharpest analytical point is that the three largest parties gained twenty seats between them and every one of those came from the middle-sized parties that had themselves been in government, which Hanska argues is too large to be explained by tactical voting. The episode also contains an unusually concrete exchange about minority government, in which Hanska identifies the constitutional obstacle and Miettinen proposes an experiment; the migration of political campaigning from Twitter to TikTok and YouTube; and a naming culture in which one flank is fascism and the other communism. Published 5 April 2023.
The Government After Sanna Marin | Jari Hanska
Summary: In episode 186 Sami Miettinen interviews Jari Hanska of Iltalehti, lead anchor of the Politiikan puskaradio podcast, two days after Finland’s April 2023 election and on the day Finland became a NATO member. Published 5 April 2023.
A note on reading this. The guest is a political journalist rather than a party representative, and his role here is to analyse rather than to defend a position. Both speakers nonetheless offer opinions, and those are marked as opinions below. The episode was recorded two days after the vote, so the discussion of government composition is speculation rather than outcome.
The most important number is not the winners’ but the losers’
This is the episode’s most analytical passage, and it outlasts the election result.
Hanska’s observation is structural: the three largest parties gained twenty seats between them, and every one of those seats came from the middle-sized parties — the Centre, the Greens and the Left Alliance, all of which had themselves been in government.
The damage of governing landed on them. And twenty seats left them, which is an enormous amount.
And then he rejects the commonest explanation:
I maintain that this cannot be put down to tactical voting at all. The whole package cannot possibly fit inside that.
His evidence is at constituency level: there are constituencies where both the Left Alliance and the Social Democrats lost a seat and the Finns Party rose — so the losses cannot all be counted as wasted votes that went to the Social Democrats.
Miettinen’s counterweight is that in some constituencies bloc logic clearly did operate: in Uusimaa the last candidate left on the beach was from the Left Alliance and would have got in had the Social Democrats’ votes been allocated differently. Both observations stand, and the episode does not settle which weighs more.
On the Left Alliance, Hanska identifies a consequence more lasting than a seat count: the party now has three constituencies where it lost its only MP. Without a sitting member, rebuilding a candidacy there is far harder — so the defeat is self-reinforcing.
Why seats fell as they did: d’Hondt
A technical but necessary detour. Miettinen notes the ruthlessness of the d’Hondt method for a mid-sized party: every halving of the comparison figure makes the tail brutal.
The Christian Democrats are the example — they took nearly as many votes as the Swedish People’s Party but far fewer seats, because the votes were distributed differently across constituencies.
Another is the last seat in Uusimaa, where the contest narrowed to Tere Sammallahti and Mika Niikko and went in the end to the Centre. Hanska’s point about why it mattered is arithmetic: had it gone the other way it would have meant plus one for the Finns Party and minus one for the National Coalition — bringing the two parties two seats closer.
Minority government: Miettinen’s proposal, Hanska’s obstacle
The longest single exchange in the episode, and worth reading because it is unusually concrete.
Miettinen proposes an experiment on the Danish and Swedish model: the National Coalition, Finns Party, Christian Democrats and Liike Nyt would form a base of exactly a hundred seats, the speaker’s chair would go to the opposition, and the Swedish People’s Party and Centre would be asked for support law by law rather than taken into government — with no confidence votes.
Hanska’s answer is constitutional rather than political, and it is the single most useful piece of information in the episode:
Our present constitution starts specifically from a government resting on a parliamentary majority. The road to a minority government is a long one. You first have to try to form a majority government.
The constitution and its preparatory materials push the system towards majority government; a minority is the option of last resort. He does not claim it impossible, and describes what it would require:
It demands a different culture of doing politics. I’d argue the role of the committees would change — committee leads would have much more decision-making power, including in opposition parties.
In other words, laws would be negotiated one at a time, reciprocally. He also names the drawback, and it is an honest one: predictability would suffer. If something like a fiscal consolidation programme has to be delivered within a set window, ad hoc politics easily produces only part of it and never the whole.
Miettinen notes that the outgoing term had already partly tested this: the government split on conscience votes and nobody demanded it fall, even though bills failed. “There was already a little dry run in that.”
As historical background, Finland has lived differently before — governments were torn down frequently in the Kekkonen era, and the National Coalition was in practice excluded for long stretches.
Why 120 seats? Hanska also explains why a majority government wants a comfortable margin rather than a bare one: ministers are often away from votes on official business, and the speaker is another seat gone — so exactly half is in practice too thin.
The migration of political campaigning
Hanska’s observation from the media’s own side is sharp and self-critical.
Journalists are on Twitter watching what happens on Twitter — but when the campaign is being fought largely on TikTok…
Political conversation, in other words, has moved to where legacy media is not looking. He adds that this changes how politics is done, not merely where it is visible.
Miettinen contributes his own observation about YouTube: there are few left-leaning Finnish channels there, and he judges YouTube’s influence equal to TikTok’s. Hanska confirms the direction without endorsing the proportions.
Named examples of social-media candidates who won seats include the Left Alliance’s Minja Koskela, Finns Party candidates in Tampere, and Sebastian Tynkkynen. Among journalists, Pauli Aalto-Setälä and Susanne Päivärinta were elected; Martin Paasi — a previous guest of the show — ended up as a reserve.
Strong women, and what is no longer unusual
A short but notable observation, made by Miettinen and confirmed by Hanska.
Riikka Purra topped the personal vote, and Miettinen’s reading is that a right-wing woman is no longer an oddity but mainstream — the Elinas and Purras are strong, and Sari Essayah polled well.
Hanska’s formulation is blunt: such a figure “isn’t some cold bitch any more.”
On Purra’s standing as party leader Hanska offers measurement: in the party barometer, trust in the Finns Party leader stood at 18 per cent under Halla-aho, fell to somewhere around 12–14 when Purra took over, and has since risen. He warns about the thinness of the data — only a couple of measurements — but regards her position as consolidated.
The Finns Party in government — and why
Hanska’s argument is administrative rather than political, and it is his clearest statement of position in the episode.
The Finns Party should be in government precisely because their way of doing politics has been… that everything is rubbish except piss. That doesn’t work any more. Then you have to produce a coherent political programme.
In other words: criticism from opposition and a programme delivered in government are different things, and the second forces the first into coherence.
He also judges that the Finns Party has a strong interest in bringing the Centre along, because it took precisely the Centre’s traditional regions in this election and would want an ally in defending them. Miettinen’s question to Petri Honkonen on the same point got an answer describing the opposite logic: it is easier for the Centre to go into opposition, rebuild support and take those regions back.
Hanska adds the counterweight that makes the dilemma real: in opposition the Centre would be tarred with the red-green bubble, and the question would become whether it is still a credible bourgeois party afterwards. Both options cost something.
Marin as a communicator
An evaluative passage, and both speakers mark it as opinion.
Miettinen credits what he calls a Trumpian quality without the pejorative: not apologising, and not backing down, are useful traits in a politician, and Marin pressed her line unwaveringly.
Hanska’s sharper observation concerns delegation. On large international questions — Uniper being the example — the prime minister left the talking to ministers, and Hanska’s explanation is shielding: the question is directed to one minister, then the next, keeping the prime minister at a distance. He grounds this in her predecessor’s fate: Antti Rinne fell precisely because he was up to his elbows in the postal workers’ dispute — a classic situation a minister should stay far away from. In passing, Sirpa Paatero carried the consequences then and has now lost her seat.
On the Hornets both agree the argument was a domestic political question rather than a NATO one: if the order of business in foreign and security policy is to be changed, this was not the way.
NATO accession day and a gold-plated pen
A lighter anecdote, but one that says something about how journalism works, and worth reading as that.
The episode was recorded on 4 April 2023, the day Finland became a NATO member — NATO’s own founding date, from 1949. Hanska says the date came as a surprise to experts too, many of whom had double bookings.
His own part in history was accidental: he had no pen with him, had grabbed his spouse’s fine Danish gold-plated pen from home, and when Foreign Minister Haavisto needed a pen to sign with, they swapped. “That looks better than this plastic thing from the foreign ministry.” And so the pen ended up on television.
Both men admit outright to enjoying the fact that Sweden was left waiting at this stage — an opinion each of them marks as one.
Naming culture, and the empty corner of the compass
The best analytical observation at the end, and it belongs to both of them.
Hanska describes the two extremes symmetrically, which is rare:
If we get a Finns Party and National Coalition government, then fascism begins immediately. And at the other end: if any social democratic policy at all is made, that is the first step towards socialism.
He calls this an overgrowth of language and finds it wearing precisely because it is said with a straight face.
His deeper concern, though, is not the name-calling but what it does to facts:
What is worrying is that if you start examining truth only through frames like these… you start questioning plain facts.
Attached to that is his wish, stated explicitly as his own opinion: that the American culture war be copied into Finland as little as possible, because he does not see it building anything.
The empty corner is the episode’s last and most interesting observation. Placing the parties on the compass, the right-liberal corner is occupied (the Swedish People’s Party type: Adlercreutz, Andersson), and the green-liberal end has names (Harjanne, Oras Tynkkynen, Osmo Soininvaara) — but:
The sector where there is nobody is the economically left-wing conservative. It is a very quiet corner.
That is, the combination of strong redistribution with value conservatism is unrepresented in Finland, though voters for it probably exist. Miettinen notes that for the same reason right and national conservatism, and left and liberalism, fall into “natural pairs” on the chart, which makes polarisation easy.
What stays with you
Three things.
The price of governing was paid by the middle. The three largest parties gained twenty seats and every one came from mid-sized parties that had been in government. That is a result visible only when you look at the losers rather than the winners — and, on Hanska’s argument, too large to be explained by tactical voting.
Minority government is not forbidden in Finland, it is made difficult. The constitution and its preparatory materials steer towards a majority, and a minority is the last resort. The trade would be more power to committees and less predictability — a far more precise answer than the debate usually offers.
There is an empty corner on the compass. An economically left-wing value conservative has no party in Finland. That observation explains both some parties’ leakage of support and why new small parties keep settling into the same corners.