Une Bastholm is pregnant: planning a leave before the election campaign – VG

Green Party (ODM) leader Une Bastholm is expecting her second child in April. The good news was announced at the party on Sunday.

– First of all, congratulations.

– Thank you.

– Do you want to go directly from the license to the debates of the party leaders and the electoral campaigns?

– I will get on a train at full speed, to the most intense phase of the electoral campaign, says Bastholm.

Get out before the decisive choice

It has been half a year since Bastholm went from being one of the two party leaders to being elected as the sole party leader.

Now it will be off from April to the end of July. Bastholm will return when the election campaign is in full swing, with the opening shot in August.

So he is preparing to be out for four months in the run-up to the election campaign and to return in the final decisive weeks before Election Day, September 13. An electoral campaign that could lead to important changes for the party, which wants government power for next year.

The Labor Party can become dependent on the MDGs, or the Red, to form a government.

– It feels like a crucial option for the MDGs. The organization has grown a lot, the party had a great growth in local elections. The experience of the party is that we are now in a completely different place in these parliamentary elections, and we are at a completely different level in opinion polls. It looks like something big is going to happen, says Bastholm.

In 2017, the ODMs received 3.2% of the vote and were therefore only allowed to retain their only seat in the Storting. The latest opinion polls have placed them above the threshold, with between 4.5 and 7.5 percent of the vote.

The party can go from one to at least eight parliamentary seats in 2021. The road is still long until Election Day September 13. They can lose and win many voters, before entering the polls in the polling stations.

– I have long prospects in our work. It takes time to build trust in a population, so it will be exciting, says Bastholm.

The substitute must keep up

Now the national board will decide how they will choose his replacement, between the two deputy leaders Arild Hermstad and Kriss Rokkan Iversen.

– The job will mainly consist of keeping up the pace into the summer, party election campaign work, and making sure people are at least as motivated in the party.

– How comfortable are you giving up the levers in the run-up to such a crucial election?

– The party is now in a place where we have many good politicians. Our two deputies have skills and experience, and can handle the electoral and party campaign well. So it feels very safe and correct, Bastholm says.

Here are the party polls for the past two months:

– it’s a squeeze

In 2017, she went on maternity leave six months after the elections, as the sole representative of the MDGs in the Storting. In hindsight, she thought that maternity leave made her less visible as a policy.

Now he will leave again after the elections.

– It’s a squeeze. I think it’s important to be open about it. For the party, it has costs, when I do not have the same capacity to work in the afternoons as the others. There are also a number of things that I miss with the family, of which I would like to be a part, says the party leader.

On the other hand, politics brings with it important voices and perspectives, Bastholm says, by electing parents of young children as leaders.

– I am also concerned that mothers of young children may occupy high positions in politics. I can, because it is a device that works.