This afternoon the election committee in the Labor Party held its first meeting.
There it was agreed to give the party organization a deadline of just two weeks to submit input to the election committee about who should lead the party further.
– The election committee is keen to propose a central board which contributes to renewal, and which also represents the entire breadth of the party organization in a good way. In this work, we want input from the party organisation, and we will therefore send a letter to the county parties about this by March 10, says the election committee’s leader, LO leader Peggy Hessen Følsvik.
The entire party leadership is up for election during the national meeting on 4–6. May. But there is one post in particular that the discussion will revolve around this time: the position of deputy leader, which became vacant when Hadia Tajik (39) stepped down as deputy leader in March last year.
Tajik himself is now opening for a comeback, just one year after his departure. At the same time, she receives strong support for this from Rogaland Ap.
Applying as a candidate
The floodlights are thus immediately turned on the other favorite in the game for the post of deputy leader: knowledge minister Tonje Brenna.
COUNCIL OF STATE: Tonje Brenna is minister of knowledge in the Støre government. Here she visits Gamlebyen school in Oslo. Photo: Per Haugen / TV 2
She belongs to the so-called Utøya generation in the Labor Party and has been highlighted as the most relevant candidate for several months.
Brenna herself has been silent about her plans. But according to what TV 2 learns, the 35-year-old has in reality made up her mind: She wants to run for deputy leader. TV 2 is informed of this from informed sources.
By all accounts, Brenna will be formally nominated by her home county of Akershus. It is expected that this will happen at a board meeting in Akershus Ap in the coming weeks.
Brenna will then confirm to the election committee that she is available, according to TV 2’s information.
From before, both the central board of the youth party AUF and county manager Cecilie Knibe Kroglund in Agder Ap pointed at Brenna. The Labor Party’s Sami parliamentary group have done the same.
The nomination may also mean that the county leader in Akershus, Foreign Minister Anniken Huitfeldt, will have to give up his place in the powerful central government.
This is because Brenna and Huitfeldt are both from Jessheim in Akershus – and it is anything but a given that the party will make room for both a deputy leader and a central board member from the same place.
Brenna does not wish to comment on the information.
– It is like that in the Labor Party that you are nominated from the county parties, so eventually we will discuss this in my county party. And then I have to have that discussion there, she said in an interview with TV 2 recently.
“Broilers”
In the TV 2 interview, it also emerges that Brenna is a classic political “broiler”, without formal education after upper secondary school, and without significant experience from ordinary working life.
Brenna started as a political advisor in AUF and was elected to the county council for Ap in Akershus in 2007. She was employed as youth secretary in LO in Akershus and Oslo in 2009 and general secretary in AUF in 2010. It was thus as general secretary in AUF that she present on Utøya during the terrorist attack on 22 July 2011, and Brenna was also among those who testified in the trial.
Her political career took off when she became a political adviser in the Ministry of Justice and then at the Prime Minister’s office for Jens Stoltenberg.
She has been minister of knowledge in the Støre government since the government took office in October 2021.
WILL SHOW THE WAY: LO leader Peggy Hessen Følsvik leads the Labor Party’s election committee, which had its first meeting today. Photo: Jonas Been Henriksen / TV 2
The voters’ favorite
The selection committee will now draw up a proposal for how the management and the rest of the central board should look in the future. The recommendation must be presented to the national assembly, but no formal deadline has been agreed for when it must be ready.
In the last instance, there may be a battle between Brenna and Tajik at the national meeting, but such an outcome is considered unusual in Ap.
An opinion poll that Kantar conducted for TV 2 earlier in February shows that Brenna is the most popular deputy leader candidate among Labor Party voters.
In the survey, 32.8 percent of Ap voters surveyed say they want Brenna as the new deputy leader, compared to 18.5 percent for Tajik and 19.3 percent for former deputy leader Trond Giske.
The survey also shows that it is Giske who is the favorite among the polled voters who not votes for the Labor Party. Giske resigned as deputy leader of the Labor Party in January 2018 after several reports against him.
He currently leads the Labor Party’s largest local team, Nidaro’s Social Democratic Forum, but has made it clear that it is out of the question for him to stand as a candidate for central positions at this national meeting.
Tajik’s resignation as deputy leader in March 2022 came after VG revealed that in 2006 she received tax-free commuter accommodation after submitting a lease which she never used. This happened while she was working as a political adviser in the government apparatus.
