SANNA MARIN AND JACINDA ARDERN : THE FAILURE OF CENTRISM

In November last year Finland's Prime Minister Sanna Marin visited New Zealand and held talks with Prime minister Jacinda Ardern. Now, some four months later, they have both resigned. Both women, it was claimed, represented a new generation of progressive social democratic leaders. But, in the end, they both defended a discredited and failed status quo.

IN THE SAME week that Jacinda Ardern delivered her valedictory speech to Parliament, another former Prime Minister resigned as the leader of her party. Sanna Marin stepped down as leader of Finland's Social Democrats following a narrow election defeat to the centre-right National Coalition Party and a likely conservative coalition government.

Marin became the world's youngest Prime Minister at the age of 34. Like Ardern, she became something of an international celebrity.  And like Ardern she was portrayed as one of a new generation of progressive leaders who would revive a declining and near-dead progressive social democratic politics. 

While Ardern talked of climate change being the 'nuclear free moment of her generation' and declared her intention to wipe out child poverty, Marin spoke of wanting to create a 'more egalitarian political culture' within Finland.

In 2019, her new centre-left government promised far-reaching social and environmental reforms and a reimagining and strengthening of the welfare state. The prevailing belief among Marin's supporters was that her government had every intention to break decisively with the economic and political status quo. 

But Sanna Marin, like Jacinda Ardern, proved to be more centrist than left. Rather than dismantle the status quo, she resolutely defended it.

The covid pandemic became an exercise in 'disaster capitalism' with thousands of workers laid off in the state-owned areas of the economy. In New Zealand the Labour Government used the pandemic as the pretext to engineer a historic transfer of wealth to the rich. 

There were major strikes throughout the four years of the Social Democratic government. The final weeks of Marin's government saw a train strike that was declared ‘open-ended’. Nurses, fighting for better pay and working conditions, planned to take indefinite action as well. The reaction of Marin's government was to join forces with the Conservatives to push through a bill depriving nurses of their basic right to strike. 

As one Finnish commentator wrote of Sanna Marin's legacy:  'By any standard, the Social Democrats’ first government since 2003 was a sham, destroying any illusion of 'Nordic socialism.''

Sanna Marin's so-called 'incrementalism' was a convenient justification for doing very little. Rather than cementing into place a progressive left government, Marin opened the door to the populist right.

The Labour Government under Ardern, in a poor substitute for real change, engaged in what has become known as woke politics or the 'culture wars'. But its fixation with racial and gender politics has only promoted new social divisions and encouraged the emergence of an authoritarian (il)liberal left that will not countenance disagreement with its views - as we saw in Auckland's Albert Park a fortnight ago.

Both Jacinda Ardern and Sanna Marin had the historic opportunity to be truly transformatory but both lacked the political vision and the political will to be such leaders. Marin paid the price for her failure at the polling booth. Jacinda Ardern exited without having to face the judgement of the electorate.