Hagen took the stage at his party's election watch meeting Monday night to the tunes of "We are the champions," clearly relishing the biggest victory his relatively right-wing Progress Party (Fremskrittspartiet) has ever scored with liberal Norwegian voters.
He warmly thanked his supporters for making the Progress Party "the leading opposition party" in Parliament and "the biggest non-socialist party" of them all. He trounced the Conservatives, which only eked out 14 percent of the vote and lost even more seats in Parliament than the Progress Party won.
Norwegian voters thus delivered a political paradox during Monday's national election, giving the biggest wins to the Progress Party and the Labour Party, which generally are at opposite ends of the political spectrum.
Many observers attribute the result to voter discontent, even anger, with the Conservative Party, which had been part of a ruling government coalition since the last such election in 2001. The Conservatives stuck with coalition leader Kjell Magne Bondevik, who simply lacked popularity among the people, and refused to cooperate with Hagen.
Demanding more bang for the buck
What's more, many voters have grown weary of hearing how Norway is among the richest countries on earth, when it can't manage to keep its schools in good shape, to clean the streets more regularly or keep hospital patients out of the corridors. They want more back from the taxes they pay, and even more use of the country's oil wealth, to enhance the country's classic social welfare state.
Analysts think lots of Conservative voters thus cast their ballots either for the Progress Party or Labour, in a backlash against their own party and the coalition of the past four years.
This in turn highlights a political irony about the Progress and Labour parties: Despite seemingly vast differences in political ideology, the two agree on several points in their party platforms. Both support more funding for nursing homes, for example, and for an array of other social services. Both are in favour of oil exploration in Arctic areas, and support gas plants.
So while Hagen already is referring derisively to Labour leader Jens Stoltenberg "and his girlfriends" (the two female leaders of Labour's government partners), and rattling the sabres of opposition, Stoltenberg may find himself actually getting support from Hagen on a range of issues sure to come up during the next four years.
