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Norway's new leaders restart coalition talks

Richard Orange
Richard Orange - [email protected]
Norway's new leaders restart coalition talks
Party leaders from left to right: Trine Skei Grande, Knut Arild Hareide, Erna Solberg, Siv Jensen - Heiko Junge / Scanpix NTB

The two junior partners in Norway's four-way coalition talks have been given the go-ahead to go back to the negotiating table, after holding meetings on Wednesday with their party leaderships.

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Knut Arild Hareide, the leader of the Christian Democrats, reportedly told his party board that he believed it would be better not to take part in the government, as the three other parties had offered too little on a range of issues, from reducing poverty and protecting farmers, to family and immigration policy. 
 
"At the election we promised voters a new non-socialist government," Hareide told his party national executive at a meeting. "That promise we will meet, but the question is whether we should be a part of it." 
 
Liberal Party leader Trine Skei Grande seems more committed to joining the Conservative Party and the Progress Party in government.
 
Norway's incoming prime minister, Erna Solberg, wants to rule with a blue coalition of all four parties, which would give her government a clear majority and also bring in enough centrist voices to balance the more right-wing Progress Party. 
 
“Without the Christian Democrats, the three other parties can unite on more modern, liberal politics,” Jan Arild Snøn, a right-wing political commentator, told VG newspaper. 
 
”With all four of them, they might be so boring that they would hardly have a chance of getting reelected.”
 
 

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