Finns Party
The Finns Party, formerly known as the True Finns, is a right-wing populist political party in Finland. It was founded in 1995 following the dissolution of the Finnish Rural Party.
The party achieved its electoral breakthrough in the 2011 Finnish parliamentary election, when it won 19.1% of votes, becoming the third largest party in the Parliament of Finland.
In the 2015 election the party got 17.7% of the votes, making it the parliament's second-largest political party. The party was in opposition for the first 20 years of its existence. In 2015, it joined the coalition government formed by Prime Minister Juha Sipilä.
Following a 2017 split, over half of the party's MPs left the parliamentary group and were subsequently expelled from their membership in the party. This defector group, Blue Reform, continued to support the government coalition, while the Finns Party went into opposition. The party, having been reduced to 17 seats after the split, increased its representation to 39 seats in the 2019 Finnish parliamentary election, while Blue Reform failed to win any seats.
During the 2023 Finnish parliamentary election, the Finns Party finished in second place with 46 seats, recording their strongest result since its founding. They then, out of Petteri Orpo's request, proceeded to form a coalition government with the winning National Coalition Party, the Christian Democrats and Swedish People's Party of Finland. The party currently holds seven of nineteen ministerial portfolios in the Orpo Cabinet.
History
Finnish Rural Party
The predecessor of the Finns Party was the Finnish Rural Party, founded by Agrarian League dissident Veikko Vennamo in 1959. Vennamo ran into serious disagreement with Arvo Korsimo, the Agrarian League's party secretary, and was excluded from the parliamentary group. As a result, Vennamo immediately started building his own organization and founded the Finnish Rural Party. Vennamo was a populist and became a critic of President Urho Kekkonen and of political corruption within the "old parties", particularly the Centre Party. The Rural Party achieved two major victories in the elections of 1970 and 1983, winning 18 and 17 seats, respectively.In the 1970s, Vennamo's personalized leadership style alienated some in the party, which led to a split in the parliamentary group in 1972. After the Rural Party's new rise in 1983 under Vennamo's son Pekka, the party became a partner in two coalition governments. However, the party's support declined steadily in the late-1980s and early-1990s. In 1995, the party won only one seat in the Finnish parliament and soon filed for bankruptcy.
Founding of the Finns Party and its rise in popularity
In the summer of 1995, following the collapse of the Finnish Rural Party, the decision to found the Finns Party was made by Timo Soini, Raimo Vistbacka, Urpo Leppänen and Kari Bärlund. Soini had been the Rural Party's last party secretary and Vistbacka its last chair and MP. The party collected the five thousand signatures needed for registration and was added to the official party register on 13 October 1995. The first party congress was held in November. Vistbacka was elected party chair and Soini the party secretary.It took some time before the Finns Party gained ground in Finnish elections. At the time of its founding in 1995, the party's sole MP was Vistbacka, who was reelected in the 1999 election. In 2003, the party won three seats: besides Vistbacka, Soini and Tony Halme were elected. In the 2007, the party gained two further seats for a total of five. In the 2008 municipal election, the Finns Party were most successful in those districts where the Social Democrats and the Left Alliance lost most. In the 2011 election, the Centre Party suffered the largest blow from the Finns Party's success.
According to a 2008–2009 study, Finns Party supporters viewed themselves as centrist: on a scale where 1 was extreme left and 10 was extreme right, the average supporter placed themselves at 5.4. According to the same study, the supporters were united by patriotism and social conservatism. A 2011 study indicated that the Finns Party was the most popular party among voters with an annual income of 35,000–50,000 euros, while over a quarter of the party's voters earn over 50,000 per year. The same study also indicated that the party's voters included a higher percentage of blue-collar workers than those of the Social Democrats.
Timo Soini
Timo Soini led the Finns Party for twenty years, from 1997 until 2017. He was first elected to the parliament in 2003. He was the party's candidate in the 2006 presidential election, and was elected to the European Parliament in 2009 with the highest personal vote share in the country. He served as an MEP for two years, returning to the Finnish parliament in the 2011 election. Soini was the party's presidential candidate for a second time in the election of 2012. Jussi Halla-aho succeeded Soini as party chair in 2017.2011–2017
The Finns Party obtained 39 seats in the 2011 election, making them the third largest party, narrowly behind the National Coalition Party and the Social Democrats. Soini received 43,212 personal votes, the highest number of all candidates, leaving behind the Foreign Minister Alexander Stubb and the Finance Minister Jyrki Katainen in their Uusimaa electoral district. The popularity of the party rose from 4.1% to 19.1% in just four years. Helsingin Sanomat wrote in an editorial that the party and Soini had "rewritten the electoral history books". According to political analyst Jan Sundberg, Soini had the ability to appeal to common people and make complicated things look easy. The election result was also referred to as "shocking" and "exceptional".After the election, the National Coalition Party began negotiations aiming to form a cabinet between the NCP, the Social Democrats, and the Finns Party. However, when it became clear that the NCP and the Social Democrats would continue to support EU bailouts, which the Finns Party vehemently opposed during the electoral campaign, the party voluntarily broke from the negotiations to become the leading opposition party. Soini said that the party would not compromise its core principles just to enter the government. According to an opinion poll, most of the party's supporters accepted this decision.
The Finns Party's popularity initially continued to rise after the 2011 election: in one opinion poll from June 2011 gave the party a record popularity of 23 percent. The party's membership rose to over 8,000 members by 2013. Membership in the party's youth organisation rose as well, going from 800 before the 2011 election to over 2,200 in 2013.
The party nominated Soini as its candidate for the 2012 presidential election; Soini finished fourth with 9.4 percent. Soini interpreted the result by saying that half of the party's voters wanted him for president, while the other half wanted to him to remain as party chair. In municipal elections later in 2012, the party got 12.3 percent of votes and 1,195 seats in the municipal councils, up more than 750 from the previous municipal election. However, this result saw the votes for the party shrink significantly from the 2011 parliamentary election result. The party got 12.9 percent of votes in the 2014 European Parliament election and increased its number of MEPs to two.
In the 2015 election, the Finns Party got 17.7% of the votes and 38 seats. This meant that they were the third largest party by votes but the second largest party by seats. The Finns Party subsequently entered into a coalition government with the Centre Party and the NCP, led by Prime Minister Juha Sipilä. The party's participation in the Sipilä Cabinet marked a softening of its Eurosceptic positions. On 22 June 2016, Finns Party MP Maria Tolppanen joined the Social Democrats, after which the Finns Party had 37 seats in the parliament. In March 2017, Soini announced that he would step down as party chair in the next party congress in June.
2017 leadership election and splits
In June 2017, Jussi Halla-aho and Sampo Terho faced off in the leadership election, in which Halla-aho received 949 votes against Terho's 646 votes and thus succeeded Soini as party chair. Sipilä and Minister of Finance Petteri Orpo soon announced that they would not continue their coalition with the Finns Party if it was led by Halla-aho. Subsequently, twenty Finns Party MPs, including Soini and Terho, defected to form a new parliamentary group under the name New Alternative, later renamed to Blue Reform and after that, in 2022, into Finnish Reform Movement. As all cabinet ministers were among the defectors, the then Blue Reform made an agreement with Sipilä to stay in the government.Following the split, MPs Veera Ruoho and Arja Juvonen left the Finns Party parliamentary group to continue as independents, after which the party's seats were reduced to fifteen. All of the defecting MPs were subsequently expelled from the Finns Party. In the following weeks, MPs Ritva Elomaa and Arja Juvonen regretted their decision and re-joined the party, raising the amount of MPs to seventeen.
The party nominated MP Laura Huhtasaari as its candidate for the 2018 presidential election. In the election, Huhtasaari placed third with 6.9 percent of the votes, while the incumbent president Sauli Niinistö went on to secure his second term with a majority of votes.
2019 general election and revival
At the 2019 Finnish parliamentary election, the Finns Party finished in second place and increased its number of MPs to 39 while the breakaway Blue Reform party lost all of its seats.On 21 June 2021, Jussi Halla-aho announced that he would retire from his position as a party leader in August 2021. He was succeeded by MP Riikka Purra on 14 August.
Since 2020, further minor splits have emerged within the party, forming the Power Belongs to the People party and Blue-and-Black Movement.
During the 2023 Finnish parliamentary election the party finished in second place ahead of the Social Democrats with 20% of the vote and 46 seats, marking the strongest result to date for the party.
In April 2023, National Coalition Party leader Petteri Orpo announced his attention to form a governing coalition with the Finns Party, Swedish People's Party, and the Christian Democrats.
In the Orpo Cabinet, the Finns have seven ministers out of 19. Former party leader Jussi Halla-aho was elected Speaker of the Parliament of Finland.