Interview by Ellen Engelstad

On September 11, Norwegian voters go to the polls for parliamentary elections. For a long time it looked as though the center-left, led by the Labor Party, would take over government after four years of right-wing rule. However, in the last phase of the campaign the race is much closer, and a lot depends on which of the smaller parties get over the electoral threshold of 4 percent — the ones on the right or the ones on the left.

Still most polls are showing that the conservative coalition will have to step down and be replaced by a Labor-led government, supported by either the Greens, the Christian Democrats, the Farmers Party, the Socialist Left Party, the Red Party, or some combination of those.

For many in Norway, such a development would be relief after the last four years of tax cuts for the rich and attacks on the country’s still extensive labor protections. Those policies have been married to a clamp down on immigration and Islamophobic rhetoric.

Still, Labor Party leader Gahr Støre is no Jeremy Corbyn. In fact, he has likened himself with the French president Emmanuel Macron, and would much rather collaborate with the center than with the Left.

The good news is that voters don’t seem to be buying it. Norway is de facto a nine-party-system, although several other smaller parties exist. On the left, two parties are now surging in the polls, challenging Labor from the left and hoping to have a say on the course of the country’s policies the next four years. We already talked to Marie Sneve Martinussen, the deputy leader of one of those left parties, Rødt (the Red Party). Here, Ellen Engelstad for Jacobin talks to Snorre Valen, the deputy leader of the Socialist Left Party, about how right-wing rule has affected Norway and the future of the country’s left.