Arendalsuka, Norway’s annual festival of politics and political correctness, is over for 2026. While the power elite packs up, the private sector is left with a profound sense of unease. What we are witnessing at present is a Labour Party in obvious panic. The left is working flat out to crack down on any independent criticism of the policies being pursued. It is disheartening and unbearable to witness. But the growing political aggression is in reality a sign of weakness, as I see it. It shows that the criticism is hitting home when the politics comes very close to a bad Kiwi advert – you know, the one about working flat out for the customers. Indeed.

The Labour Party’s model of power is built on an enormous public sector. An enormous public sector is, in my view, no accident. For when more than 33% of Norway’s workforce receives its salary from the state or a municipality, the strategy is presumably to secure the party a loyal voter base that becomes directly economically dependent on the state remaining large. But the model is cracking. When economic policy fails, the private-sector engine that is supposed to pay for the whole show is being strangled by wealth tax and an increased tax burden, and the head of the Oil Fund, Nicolai Tangen, openly warns that the fund’s glory days may be over, the Labour Party has to pull yet another ‘elephant’ out of the hat.

The Labour Party resorts to its oldest instrument of power: frightening the population into line. The rhetoric of war is now being brought right into our children’s classrooms. The warmongering is to be rubbed in. Minister of Education Kari Nessa Nordtun (Labour) has just declared that it is ‘absolutely necessary’ for Norwegian school pupils to receive instruction in war preparedness and conscription as part of the curriculum.

This is no longer merely about adults stockpiling water and tinned food; fear itself is now to be institutionalised in schools. It is an abdication of responsibility of a rare kind, as I see it. Europe is up to its ears in debt, and the Norwegian Armed Forces have been depleted after decades of disarmament (read Stoltenberg). The rhetoric of fear in schools is being used cynically to divert attention from a historically weak krone, the loss of national sovereignty to the EU, and a failed energy policy. Frightened people gravitate towards the familiar, and I assume Labour hopes that fear will serve as a political glue. Its political glue.

But we can see the Labour Party’s growing nightmare. It is unfolding in the opinion polls. Young men are turning their backs on the party. They have had enough of state overreach, an identity politics that comes very close to mocking them, obfuscation and policies that stifle creativity and enterprise. And when young men turn away, the strategists know perfectly well what happens. The young women will follow. Biology, everyday life and the desire to start a family constitute a powerful primal instinct. The dynamic between man and woman, as well as the need for a secure economic future for the next generation, outweigh party loyalty to the Labour Party.

If we are to steer the ship into calmer waters, we must stop raising our children in fear and instead begin celebrating creativity and enterprise. We must give entrepreneurs and the self-employed the status they deserve in society. After all, it is the entrepreneurs, those who take personal risks and build businesses from the ground up, who finance the welfare state. Without them, there will be little to distribute.

Norway does not need more state coercion and rhetoric of war. We need visions, strategies and sound objectives for the next 10 and 50 years. Good, autonomous leaders must be cultivated once again, and loyalty must once more be to the citizens rather than the EU. Lower taxes for small businesses must be introduced, and restoring respect for the true builders of society is a virtue born of necessity. And we know, yes, all the ‘elephants’ know, that a controlled slimming-down of the public bureaucracy must be carried out.

The aggression from the left shows only one thing: that the opposing forces are gaining ground. It does little good for leading politicians, powerful trade-union leaders, highly paid bureaucrats, subsidy-chasing lobbyists and journalists who have abdicated their role to lash out with a clenched fist. We know that they operate within a closed circuit of cronyism and networking. They never risk their own money. To them, the state budget is an inexhaustible honeypot used to buy political popularity and secure careers.
Looking the truth in the eye is not their thing. But it may become our fate.