Raymond Johansen, Oslo | First, they reject Jan Bøhler

That the insults have been hailed on social media after the Labor veteran switches parties is a bit surprising and indicates bad antennas. Bøhler has long made it clear that he wants to continue in politics after he was rejected in the Oslo Labor Party.

– The greatest traitor I have experienced in politics through more than fifty years of membership in the Labor Party, writes former Labor Party councilor for transport in Oslo, Steinar Saghaug, on Facebook.

– For a damn self-absorbed traitor, writes Labor politician Andreas Halse in Oslo on Twitter.

Bøhler has been a guest on the Stavrum & Eikeland podcast in recent months, and most listeners will have noticed that he warned against the development of the Labor Party and kept open the opportunity to put on another list.

In that sense, it was a smaller bomb than many perceived when Jan Bøhler posted this message on Facebook this morning:

In the 2017 parliamentary elections, the Labor Party received 104,000 votes and 28.4 percent of the votes. He held five seats, one smaller than the previous election. The list is shared with men and women in all other places. Party leader Jonas Gahr Støre writes himself first, while former Minister Espen Barth Eide comes in third. Among male politicians, there is a battle for fifth place, and Oslo party leader Frode Jacobsen is doing well.

Probably a party must have more than 14,500 votes in Oslo to obtain a mandate. In the last election, the Center Party received 7,800 votes and was 6,700 short of votes to win a mandate from Oslo, according to the NRK seat distribution. There’s Jan Bøhler’s list.

For the Labor Party, it will be extremely difficult to maintain the fifth term. In the 2019 municipal elections, the party obtained 73,000 votes and a drop from 32 to 20 percentage points. The Center Party, on the other hand, made some progress in the previous two elections.

In the last election, Espen Barth Eide, who ranked fifth on the Labor Party’s list, was elected by a margin of 24,000 votes, according to the NRK’s ​​term calculation. All other things being equal, the Labor Party should have more than 80,000 votes to win five seats. It would have been difficult with Jan Bøhler on the team, while now it seems darker.

Today’s unconditional winner is the leader of the Center Party, Trygve Slagsvold Vedum. He understands that Grorud and Stovner have experience as far away from the Storting, as Hamar and Stange. Groruddalen is the conflict between the center and the periphery of Oslo, and with Jan Bøhler as a force in the party, the Center Party can modernize its metropolitan politics.

The bitterness surrounding Jan Bøhler’s decision to leave the party is symptomatic of the struggle for the soul of the Labor Party. The party made a terrible decision in rural Norway and experienced the Center Party taking over the traditional red counties and municipalities in northern Norway and inland.

The red-green alliance in Oslo, where the party rules in association with SV and the Green Party, and with the support of Rødt, has a weak solid base in the districts. A sort of red-green academic party, on the one hand, and more traditional private sector voters of the workers’ party, on the other. We last saw it in the battle for the E18 Western Corridor, where the Labor Party ran over the Oslo Party on the outskirts of Oslo.

The recent Oslo budget is another example. It will be more expensive and more difficult to drive a car, while the prices of public transport will go up. In return, the Oslo City Council will increase the municipal spending by NOK 135 million per year to forcibly communicate popular private nursing homes. The ban on new private kindergartens is another example of a policy that voters do not applaud. In the last elections, the Red Greens went to the polls to ask for an increase in property taxes. It was popular in SV and Rødt, while the Labor Party collapsed.

At the moment it is difficult to predict whether the Center Party and Jan Bøhler will manage to get the 15,000 or so necessary votes, but it seems almost more likely that the Labor Party could win the fifth seat in Oslo.

In that sense, he’s rice behind his own back when the Oslo Labor Party first rejects Jan Bøhler, and then calls him a fucking traitor. It will not be surprising if the election result shows that the Labor Party needs Jan Bøhler, more than Jan Bøhler needs the Oslo Labor Party.

P.S! What do you mean? Do you have any feelings for Jan Bøhler or do you think he has betrayed the Labor Party? Write a reader letter!