---
title: "The Government After Sanna Marin | Jari Hanska | Neuvottelija 186"
titleOriginal: "Sanna Marinin jälkeinen hallitus | Jari Hanska | Neuvottelija 186"
episodeNumber: "186"
guest: "Jari Hanska"
datePublished: 2023-04-05
duration: "47:36"
youtube: "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fc_yZ-NhNr8"
originalLanguage: "fi"
topics: ["free_speech_society","leadership_governance","finnish_economy_policy"]
subtitleMethod: "none"
provenance: "Owner page assembled from YouTube metadata, the neuvottelija.fi episode record and a MacWhisper transcription of the Finnish audio. The chapter marks are the publisher's own list as released with the video, each verified to fall within ten seconds of a real transcript cue. No English caption track was produced, so no transcript is published here. The guest is a political journalist rather than a party representative; where either speaker offers an opinion rather than analysis, the summary marks it as one. One remark made in passing about how a named candidate won her seat is not carried onto this page, being an unverified claim about an individual."
fiCanonical: "https://www.neuvottelija.fi/fi/episodes/275-sanna-marinin-jalkeinen-hallitus-jari-hanska-neuvottelija-18"
canonical: https://www.neuvottelija.com/podcast/episodes/ep186-sanna-marinin-jalkeinen-hallitus-jari-hanska/
---
# The Government After Sanna Marin | Jari Hanska | Neuvottelija 186

English subtitles are not available on this page. This is an episode summary, not a curated transcript.

## Chapters

- [00:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fc_yZ-NhNr8&t=0s) Jari Hanska, Jarno Liski, Marko-Oskari Lehtonen and others make up Politiikan puskaradio
- [01:12](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fc_yZ-NhNr8&t=72s) From Sanna Marin's blue-and-black flag remark to a political reporter's dream season
- [03:42](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fc_yZ-NhNr8&t=222s) The gold-plated pen: Finland joins NATO on 4 April 2023
- [07:49](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fc_yZ-NhNr8&t=469s) A dramatic election night and its high points; the swings in the forecasts
- [09:50](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fc_yZ-NhNr8&t=590s) Tere Sammallahti, Onni Rostila and the death constituency of Uusimaa
- [12:54](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fc_yZ-NhNr8&t=774s) Did the Social Democrats eat the red-green bubble's lunch? The Left Alliance, Centre and Greens collapse
- [14:50](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fc_yZ-NhNr8&t=890s) Li Andersson's slogan and Petteri Orpo's recycled victory speech
- [16:47](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fc_yZ-NhNr8&t=1007s) The Putinists flew out of parliament. Did Marin's Hornet affair matter?
- [18:48](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fc_yZ-NhNr8&t=1128s) The Christian Democrats and Swedish People's Party in play; a long look at minority government
- [25:50](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fc_yZ-NhNr8&t=1550s) The Centre Party in a pivotal role once again
- [30:29](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fc_yZ-NhNr8&t=1829s) The Finns Party ought to govern, having coloured in the electoral map
- [34:49](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fc_yZ-NhNr8&t=2089s) Sanna Marin as a communicator, in government and now outside it
- [38:37](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fc_yZ-NhNr8&t=2317s) The presidential game in three parties' hands: Halla-aho versus Purra
- [41:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fc_yZ-NhNr8&t=2490s) National conservatism versus woke; the gaps in political compasses; why the liberals did not succeed
- [46:08](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fc_yZ-NhNr8&t=2768s) A joke of the week, in honour of Politiikan puskaradio

## A note on reading this

The guest is a political journalist rather than a party representative, and his role is to
analyse rather than defend a position. Both speakers nonetheless offer opinions, marked as
such below. The episode was recorded two days after the vote, so the discussion of
government composition is speculation rather than outcome.

## Summary

**Jari Hanska** of Iltalehti came on two days after Finland's April 2023 election, on the
day Finland became a NATO member.

**The important number is the losers', not the winners'.** The three largest parties gained
twenty seats between them, and all of them came from the Centre, the Greens and the Left
Alliance — parties that had themselves been in government. "The damage of governing landed
on them." Hanska rejects tactical voting as the explanation, pointing to constituencies
where both the Left Alliance and the Social Democrats lost a seat while the Finns Party
rose. Miettinen's counterweight, that bloc logic clearly operated in Uusimaa where the last
candidate left out was from the Left Alliance, is left standing beside it. For the Left
Alliance the lasting consequence is three constituencies with no sitting MP at all, which
makes rebuilding a candidacy there much harder.

**Minority government gets an unusually concrete airing.** Miettinen proposes a
Danish-style experiment: a hundred-seat base, the speaker's chair to the opposition, and
support sought law by law rather than through coalition. Hanska's answer is constitutional
— the constitution and its preparatory materials push the system towards a parliamentary
majority, and a minority is the option of last resort. He does not call it impossible, and
sets out the trade: committee leads, including in opposition, would gain real power, and
predictability would fall, which matters if something like a consolidation programme has to
land inside a set window. He also explains why a majority wants 120 rather than 101 seats:
ministers are often absent on official business and the speaker is another seat gone.

**Campaigning has moved and journalism has not followed.** Journalists watch Twitter while
the campaign is fought on TikTok, and Hanska's point is that this changes how politics is
done rather than merely where it is seen. Miettinen adds that YouTube is as influential and
has few left-leaning Finnish channels.

**He argues the Finns Party should govern**, on administrative rather than political
grounds: opposition rhetoric does not survive contact with the need to produce a coherent
programme. He judges the party would want the Centre alongside it, having just taken the
Centre's traditional regions — while conceding the Centre may find opposition the easier
route to winning them back, at the cost of being tarred with the bloc it leaves behind.

**On Marin as a communicator** both credit the refusal to apologise or retreat. Hanska's
sharper observation is about delegation on large international files such as Uniper, which
he reads as shielding — grounded in Antti Rinne having fallen precisely by being too close
to the postal dispute.

The episode closes on a naming culture Hanska describes symmetrically — one flank is
instantly fascism, the other instantly socialism — and on his deeper worry that framing of
that kind ends in questioning plain facts. The last observation is the best: on the Finnish
compass the economically left-wing value conservative corner is empty, though voters for it
probably exist.

## Watch

The recording lives on the Neuvottelija channel:
[Sanna Marinin jälkeinen hallitus | Jari Hanska | Neuvottelija 186](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fc_yZ-NhNr8).
A Finnish edition of this episode is published at
[www.neuvottelija.fi](https://www.neuvottelija.fi/fi/episodes/275-sanna-marinin-jalkeinen-hallitus-jari-hanska-neuvottelija-18).

---

Cite as: Sami Miettinen, Neuvottelija — The Government After Sanna Marin | Jari Hanska | Neuvottelija 186, https://www.neuvottelija.com/podcast/episodes/ep186-sanna-marinin-jalkeinen-hallitus-jari-hanska/, 2023-04-05. For quotes include episode 186 and timestamp.