Good morning. Sanna Marin was the most popular prime minister in Finland this century, was praised for her handling of the pandemic, and led her country to join Nato - today - with overwhelming support. Sunday’s election saw her centre-left Social Democratic party (SDP) increase its vote share and number of MPs. Nonetheless, she and the SDP have been defeated – and Finland is moving to the right.
After the results came in, the leader of the conservative National Coalition party (NCP), Petteri Orpo, said his party was “a clear alternative to the leftwing government”. He is likely to be the next prime minister. And while it is possible that he will ultimately form a coalition with the SDP, he may first seek to form a government with the far-right Finns party, which had its best election result ever.
The explanation of why Marin is being forced from office starts with the state of the Finnish economy, and deep anxiety over the size of the post-pandemic national debt. And what’s happened in Finland has resonances across Europe, as centre-left parties struggle to persuade voters that they are the right custodians at a time of financial crisis. Today’s newsletter, with Guardian Europe correspondent Jon Henley, runs you through it. Here are the headlines.
Five big stories
Business | More than a dozen women have made allegations of sexual misconduct against senior figures at the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), the country’s most influential business lobbying organisation. The claims include an alleged rape at a staff boat party on the River Thames.
Crime | Thomas Cashman has been sentenced for at least 42 years for the murder of Olivia Pratt-Korbel in Liverpool in August. Speaking before the verdict, Olivia’s mother Cheryl described her as a “beautiful, sassy, chatty girl who never ran out of energy”.
US politics | Donald Trump arrived in New York City a day before he is due in court to respond to the first ever criminal indictment filed against a former American president. Media organisations have petitioned for the release of the indictment, which reportedly contains upwards of 30 charges and at least one felony related to hush money paid to adult film star Stormy Daniels.
Water pollution | England’s most celebrated beaches faced 8,500 hours of sewage dumping last year, new figures show. Many beaches with blue flag status – an international mark that a beach is deemed safe and has good water quality – were found to have been covered in waste over the last 12 months.
UK news | Nigel Lawson, who was chancellor for six years during Margaret Thatcher’s premiership, has died at the age of 91. Rishi Sunak described him as “a transformational chancellor and an inspiration”.
In depth: ‘People have real economic worries, and the right hammered that message’
When Sanna Marin became the world’s youngest prime minister in 2019, she came from the left of her party, and pledged to maintain the programme that had recently taken the SDP to its first election victory in 20 years: make the country carbon neutral by 2035, increase public spending on welfare and infrastructure, and raise taxes to pay for it. “Finland will not be finished in four years,” she said. “But it can get better.”
Finland may not be finished, but Marin’s premiership is, with the conservative National Coalition Party (NCP) and their leader Petteri Orpo the beneficiaries. “It’s a decisive shift to the right,” Jon Henley said. “People have real post-pandemic economic worries, and the NCP have hammered that message.”
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Why did Marin lose?
Not because of a leaked video of her dancing exuberantly which prompted a drugs test (she passed): while that story drew outsized international attention, neither it – nor spurious related questions about Marin’s character – have been a decisive feature of the campaign. “It made her fans more enthusiastic, and her enemies more critical,” said Jon. “At most, it accentuated the differences.”
By some measures, Marin and the SDP did pretty well: for a governing party to increase its vote share is unusual in Finland, and Marin’s personal popularity was a central part of their pitch to voters. “Finnish prime ministers don’t often win re-election,” said Jon. “To some extent she escaped the curse of the incumbent, but it wasn’t enough.”
The SDP added three seats, but the NCP and nationalist party the Finns gained 17 in Finland’s 200-seat parliament. Meanwhile, the vote for smaller parties in the left-leaning coalition collapsed – perhaps as their supporters sought to defend Marin. “They really did catastrophically,” Jon said. “So there’s a chunk of Marin’s residual personal popularity that explains that, but also, clearly, some tactical voting going on.”
While Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a huge issue in neighbouring Finland, and behind its new membership of Nato, it was not a point of disagreement. Instead, as Marin tacked to the left to shore up the SDP’s support, the right successfully leaned into concerns about Finland’s growing national debt and persuaded voters that it is a time to cut social programmes to balance the books. “The last election was very values-based – it was about immigration and inequality,” Jon said. “After the pandemic and the war, the economy has come back to to the forefront.”
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Who is Petteri Orpo?
“I saw somebody tweet that the world has returned to its natural state of being unable to recognise the Finnish prime minister in a crowd,” Jon said. “He’s not a very charismatic character.” But while Orpo is unlikely to achieve international political rock star status, he is seen as a moderate and experienced figure and trusted on the economy. The 53-year-old has led the NCP since 2016, was deputy prime minister between 2017 and 2019, and has held several government ministries, winning praise for his handling of a tenfold increase in migrant arrivals in 2015.
He has promised to cut spending on unemployment benefits and other welfare programmes in order to allow tax cuts. “He has been very clear that he won’t change tack on Russia – it was the first thing he said in his victory speech,” Jon said. “But the crucial question about the direction of his government is who he goes into coalition with.”
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What will happen next?
Under Finland’s proportional representation system, the largest party gets the first chance to seek to form a government, a process that could take weeks. Orpo will go about that by sending out questionnaires to other parties this week to scope out space for an agreement. (Jon has more detail in this piece.) He is expected to start by seeking the support of the Finns, the far-right party whose popularity was bolstered by worries over inflation and claims that excessive non-EU immigration is to blame for the problem.
The Finns’ route into government is not straightforward, though. Two possible coalition partners, the Greens and the Centre party, ruled out entering any coalition on Monday, the Helsinki Times reported. Other smaller parties have said they will not join any coalition of which the Finns are a part, while more moderate backbenchers in Orpo’s own party have reservations about making concessions to them.
“The NCP and the Finns agree vaguely over the economy, but they have massive ideological differences over Europe – the Finns are pretty much the only European far-right party which still calls for leaving the EU in the long term – and climate change: they want to postpone the carbon neutral target beyond 2035,” Jon said. “And they strongly disagree on migration: Orpo wants to encourage targeted, job-specific immigration to fill vacancies, and that’s anathema to the Finns.”
The Finns may have their own anxieties about compromise. “They were in government from 2015 to 2017. They had to abandon a lot of their popular talking points to do it, and that led to the party splitting. Once they go into government and they have to compromise with reality, it gets very difficult for them. So they may well think twice.”
If so, it is possible that Orpo will turn to Marin and the SDP – but that coalition would still require support from two other smaller parties for even a majority of a few seats. “Whichever way Orpo turns, forming a government is going to be tricky,” Jon said.
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What does this tell us about the direction of travel across Europe?
The result in Finland “reflects something that looks like it’s becoming a general trend,” Jon said. “The right did well in Sweden last year, and it looks like they will in Spain and Poland this year. It’s about post-pandemic worry and the economy trumping everything else.”
At the same time, classic centre-left parties are seeing their vote share hold up above disastrous levels – “but that has to be put in the context of where they were a decade ago. They have about half the support they did.”
That’s part of a general tendency for European politics to fragment – a phenomenon whose impact is somewhat masked in the UK and US by their first-past-the-post systems. “There are 10 parties in the Finnish parliament now, there are 13 in the Netherlands,” Jon said. “The big parties of centre-left and centre-right which dominated politics after the second world war are no longer in that position. And it seems like their ability to reverse that trend is limited.”
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What else we’ve been reading
Thaslima Begum spoke to women who lived through the horrors of Bangladesh’s rape camps 52 years ago. Despite being one of the first recorded examples of sexual violence being systematically and consciously used a weapon of war in the 20th century, a lack of official recognition has made it difficult for survivors to come to terms with their experiences. Nimo
After Jodie Comer and Paul Mescal led the winners at the Olivier awards, Arifa Akbar writes that the triumph of the A-listers is part of a broader tendency. “Is a big name what producers feel will now sell a show?” she asks. “Where does it leave emerging stage talent?” Archie
Even though influencers and social media content creators are more important than ever to the platforms they use, they are facing something of an existential crisis, writes Kaitlyn Tiffany in the Atlantic (£). Nimo
For the long read, Charlotte Higgins profiles the author Deborah Levy, whose readers “start to perceive the world in Levy-ish ways”. “I am easily bored and impatient,” Levy says. “How do you make the novel as complicated as life, as interesting as life? That’s what I want to do.” Archie
Alaina Demopoulos delves into the bizarre and potentially troubling world of ‘diverse’ AI models. The ramifications of this computer-generated inclusivity could be tantamount to a kind of digital blackface — so why are fashion companies opting to use them? Nimo
Sport
Football | Michael Keane (above) snatched a 1-1 draw and a crucial point for struggling Everton with a stunning 90th-minute equaliser against Tottenham Hotspur. In a game where both sides had a player sent off, Keane’s goal cancelled out Harry Kane’s 68th-minute penalty. Kane was booed off by Everton fans after he collapsed theatrically to the ground when Everton’s Abdoulaye Doucouré shoved him in the face.
Football | The FA has announced that the home and away kits for England’s Lionesses have switched from white shorts to blue after players said that they were concerned about playing in white while on their period.
Swimming | Swim England has announced a new policy governing transgender athletes with “open” and “female” categories for all its licensed events. From September, transgender and non-binary athletes will compete in the “open” category. Self-ID will be allowed in low-level “unlicensed” events, but times posted at those events will not be eligible for ranking points or records.
The front pages
The Guardian leads with “Revealed: CBI in turmoil following new claims of sexual misconduct.” The Times has “Almost half of voters say Starmer still lacks vision” while the Telegraph splashes with “Nigel Lawson, Thatcher’s tax slasher, dies at 91”.
The 42-year sentence given to Olivia Pratt-Korbel’s killer fills several front pages. The Mirror goes with “Mum’s bravery and the cowardice of a killer” and Express says “42 years: Life for Olivia’s life”. The Mail’s headline reads: “I keep thinking I have forgotten to pick Olivia up from school … I just miss hearing her voice”.
The FT has “EY banned from German audit work for two years after Wirecard scandal” and the i newspaper says “UK summer holidays hit by passport delays after new strikes”. The Sun leads with “Phil: I no longer have a brother” after TV star Phillip Schofield’s brother was found guilty of sexually abusing a teenage boy.
Today in Focus
The indictment of Donald Trump
The former US president will appear in a criminal court in New York City today to answer charges relating to campaign finance offences. Hugo Lowell reports
Cartoon of the day | Lou McKeever
The Upside
A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad
Apo Whang-Od is an indigenous tattooist credited with helping to keep alive a form of the art known as batok, which involves tapping the tattoo into the skin by hand, using a thorn dipped in soot and natural dye.
Now, at the age of 106, she has graced the cover of Vogue Philippines, and is thought to be the oldest cover star in the publication’s history. “We felt she represented our ideals of what is beautiful about our Filipino culture,” said Bea Valdes, the magazine’s editor in chief. “We believe that the concept of beauty needs to evolve, and include diverse and inclusive faces and forms. What we hope to speak about is the beauty of humanity.”
Sign up here for a weekly roundup of The Upside, sent to you every Sunday
Bored at work?
And finally, the Guardian’s puzzles are here to keep you entertained throughout the day – with plenty more on the Guardian’s Puzzles app for iOS and Android. Until tomorrow.
