“Sit with me baby, tell me when I’m not around”

The former culture minister has issued a quote from the poet Tor Ulven. He will conclude his speech in which he announces that he is withdrawing from the race for leadership positions in the Trndelag Labor Party, at the end of August 2020.

Not only did he resign from the leadership post, his offense went deeper. Giske concretizes it with a small personal poetry analysis from The Wolf:

“Leaving Labor almost felt like that,” he added from the podium.

Marchitt meeting in Trøndelag Ap has reached its dramatic climax. The road back to the new top spot in Ap has ended with a new metoo accusation, Giske seems to have given up.

As if to emphasize that the offense was mutual, the AUF marched out of the hall as Giske gave his closing speech. They missed both poems and that Giske said he “stopped” at Ap.

Perhaps it just the same. Two years later, it is clear that he has not quit the party. Giske, on the other hand, is very active. In November last year, he became manager of local team Nidaros, the smallest team in Trøndelag, with 9 members. Furthermore, as long as Giske was no longer “found” in the Labor Party, things went from bad to worse.

In November last year, he used his own Facebook page to criticize the Toko government’s proposal for the state budget, because the government did not allow vacation payments for the unemployed and to lower benefits for the disabled (both parts were later negotiated by the SV).

Giske also distinguished himself as an internal opposition to electricity policy, with demands for more regulation and criticism of foreign wiring.

Along the way, he has built the Nidaros Ap to become the party’s largest team, with over 800 members. Its size will give more influence to Giske’s local team in Trøndelag Ap – the regional team that sends the most delegates to the party’s national meeting.

Everyone can see what he is doing, but what does he want – what is he thinking?

The question remains in the air, like Tor Ulven’s quote. This prompted the newspaper Morgenbladet to travel to Trøndelag recently, to make a report on how Giske is working at the local level. Journalists can report “Allsang with Trond Giske – and constant blows on the government”.

It seems that a central element in Giske’s growth strategy is challenging his own party leadership.

The Nidaros Ap’s actual construction is perfect for that. Despite the name Arch-Trønder, the team is exempt from local regulatory issues and the like. Nidaros defines itself as a so-called “theme team”, in line with the Gay network and the International Forum on Ap. What is the “theme” in Nidaros? This is the ideology of social democracy, which in practice opens the door to many things.

With that, Giske has built a solid platform, both in terms of members and potential areas of concern. This summer, Giske was in Arendalsuka, and took part in a number of debates on electricity policy.

Become a “theme team” also facilitates recruitment as effectively as possible. The whole country is a catchment area. Thus, Nidaros was able to make the most of the insights that Giske himself shared in a statement to Dagbladet this week:

“There is no doubt that social media is now the most important recruitment arena for political work”.

This is how Giske also comes into contact with the softest point in his political record.

The article on Dagbladet raises the issue that board member Nidaros is a moderator on Facebook’s “Support group for Trond Giske”, a page that has struggled with incitement against Jonas Gahr Støre and Hadia Tajik. Giske has met with the group administrator, who is a member of the Conservative Party and who regularly runs recruitment campaigns for Nidaros Ap. Giske has also served in the group itself. Another Nidaros board member has been on the Facebook page “Giske supporters and social democrats” and answers how to become a member.

This reminds me of some scenes in NRK news documentary about Trond Giske. Among other things, he met a supporter in his caravan, who had so far erased the factual basis of the metoo movement for which Giske was forced to retaliate.

This balancing act isn’t entirely easy, to put it mildly. It appears that Giske is building some of its growth on the remnants of the metoo controversy and its supporters from there. Based on this alone, he must have confused the leadership of the AP, which of course would not have given rise to infighting and accusations of usurping power in the party’s life-long treatment. Giske has acknowledged and apologized for the inappropriate behavior associated with some notifications, but at the same time denied the content of some other notifications against him.

The balancing act is also reflected in how it handles its position in electricity policy. Giske didn’t want to come across as a rebel. After breaking the sound barrier with the current conflicting events in Arendal, he was invited to “Dagsnytt 18”. There he reversed the argument slightly, so that the criticism tilted toward the NHO and to the right. Smart enough.

Giske’s position in Ap standing in a strange kind of vacuum. Nothing forbids Giske from seeking power in Ap, but still he refuses to go it alone – perhaps because he knows he’s too controversial. All the cases and media reports that poke at this – perhaps this comment as well – play into different interpretations of how this vacuum works.

Not necessarily the obscurity is a loss for him. The attention that helps to create can also have a mobilizing effect.

At the same time, Nidaros grew, and so did Giske. The deposed deputy is 55 years old. For a man who could make a local team go from zero to 800 in nine months, that was still more than enough time.