The Labour Party is officially committed to social-democratic ideals. Its slogan since the 1930s has been "everyone shall be included" (alle skal med)[needs update] and the party traditionally seeks a strongwelfare state, funded throughtaxes andduties.[6] Since the 1980s, the party has included more of the principles of asocial market economy in its policy, allowing forprivatisation of state-owned assets and services and reducing income taxprogressivity, following the wave ofeconomic liberalisation during the 1980s. During the first Stoltenberg government, the party's policies were inspired byTony Blair'sNew Labour agenda in theUnited Kingdom and saw the most widespread privatisation by any government in Norway to that date.[7] The party has frequently been described as increasinglyneoliberal since the 1980s, both by political scientists and opponents on thepolitical left.[8] The Labour Party profiles itself as aprogressive party that subscribes to co-operation on a national as well as international level.
Founded in 1887, the party steadily increased in support until it became the largest party in Norway at the1927 parliamentary election, a position it has held ever since. That year also saw the consolidation of conflicts surrounding the party during the 1920s following its membership in the Comintern. It first formed a government in 1928 and has led the government for all but sixteen years since 1935. From1945 to1961, the party had anabsolute majority in the Norwegian Parliament, to date the last time this has happened in the history of Norway. The electoral domination by the Labour Party during the 1960s and early 1970s was initially broken by competition from smaller left-wing parties, primarily from theSocialist People's Party. From the late 1970s, the party started to lose voters due to a rise inright-wing parties, leading to a swing to the right for the Labour Party underGro Harlem Brundtland during the 1980s. In2001, the party achieved its worst result since1924. Between2005 and2013, Labour returned to power after committing to a coalition agreement with other parties in order to form amajority government.[6] Labour entered opposition again after losing nine seats in 2013. The party lost a further six seats in2017, yielding the second-lowest number of seats since 1924. Since the2021 and2025 elections, Labour has headed a minority government.
The party was founded in 1887[11][12] in Arendal and first ran in elections to theStorting in 1894. It entered the parliament in1903 and steadily increased its vote until1927, when it became the largest party in Norway. The party were members ofCommunist International (Comintern), acommunist organisation, between 1918 and 1923.[13]
From the establishment ofVort Arbeide in 1884, the party had a growing and notable organisation of newspapers and other press outlets. The party press system eventually resulted inNorsk Arbeiderpresse (Norwegian Labour Press). In January 1913, the party had 24 newspapers and six more newspapers were founded in 1913. The party also had the periodicalDet 20de Aarhundre.[14] In 1920, the party had 33 newspapers and 6 semi-affiliated newspapers.[15] The party had its own publishing house,Det norske Arbeiderpartis forlag, succeeded byTiden Norsk Forlag. In addition to books and pamphlets, Det norske Arbeiderpartis forlag publishedMaidagen (annualMay Day publication),Arbeidets Jul (annual Christmas publication) andArbeiderkalenderen (calendar).[16] The party also published a monthly political magazine,Kontakt, between 1947 and 1954 which was edited byTorolf Elster.[17]
From its roots as a radical alternative to the political establishment, the party grew to its current dominance through several eras. The party experienced a split in 1921 caused by a decision made two years earlier to join the Comintern and theSocial Democratic Labour Party of Norway was formed. In 1923, the party left the Comintern while a significant minority of its members left the party to form theCommunist Party of Norway. In 1927, the Social Democrats were reunited with Labour. Some Communists also joined Labour whereas other Communists tried a failed merger endeavor which culminated in the formation of theArbeiderklassens Samlingsparti. The same year,Helga Karlsen became the party's first female Member of Parliament.[18]
In 1928,Christopher Hornsrud formed Labour's first government, but it lasted only two weeks. During the early 1930s, Labour abandoned its revolutionary profile and set a reformist course. Labour then returned to government in 1935 and remained in power throughout theSecond World War. The party was a member of theLabour and Socialist International between 1938 and 1940.[19] When Norway was invaded byNazi Germany in 1940, the Labour-led government and the Norwegian royal family fled to London, whence it led a government-in-exile for the duration of the war.
Immediately following the end of theSecond World War, the Labour Party emerged victorious from the1945 Norwegian parliamentary election. For the first time, the party secured an absolute majority in theStorting, taking 76 of 150 seats.Einar Gerhardsen of the Labour Party subsequently formed his first government, and he went on to dominate the post-war political scene over the following years. Gerhardsen is commonly referred to asLandsfaderen (Father of the Nation) and is generally considered one of the principal architects behind the reconstruction of Norway after the Second World War. The period from 1945 has been described as the golden age of the Norwegian Labour Party, and the party retained its parliamentary majority until the1961 election. In 1963, theKings Bay Affair drove the opposition to table amotion of no-confidence against the Gerhardsen's cabinet; the motion was ultimately successful, and Labour was forced to step down from government for the first time in 28 years. However, the incoming centre-right coalition proved short-lived, and Labour returned to government less than one month later, and remained in office until 1965.
The Labour Party later formed government in the periods of 1971–1972, 1973–1981, 1986–1989, and 1990–1997. Labour prime ministers in this period included party veteransOscar Torp,Trygve Bratteli, andGro Harlem Brundtland, and the party remained the largest in Norway throughout the remainder of the 20th century.
In the year 2000, the centre-right coalition led byKjell Magne Bondevik of theChristian Democrats was toppled in a confidence vote, and the Labour Party returned to power underJens Stoltenberg, who became prime minister. However, after a period of intense infighting between Stoltenberg and former prime ministerThorbjørn Jagland, and a turbulent spell in government, the party collapsed to only 24.3% of the vote in the2001 Norwegian parliamentary election, marking its worst result since 1924. The party returned to the opposition under Stoltenberg's leadership, before later recovering to 32.7% in the2005 Norwegian parliamentary election. The Labour Party subsequently formed its first ever peace-time coalition government along with theSocialist Left andCentre parties. Their cooperation was dubbed theRed-green coalition, in emulation of similar constellations in Germany.
In 2011, the party changed its official name from the Norwegian Labour Party (Det norske arbeiderparti) to the Labour Party (Arbeiderpartiet). The party claimed there had been confusion among voters at polling stations because of the difference between the official name and the common use name of Labour Party. The name change causedArbeiderpartiet to appear on the ballot, eliminating any potential confusion.[20][21] On 22 July 2011, terroristAnders Behring Breivikopened fire at the Labour Party's youth camp (ages 13–25), killing 69 people and killing eight more in Oslo with a bomb towards a government building (which was led by the Labour Party). Stoltenberg's initial response to the 22 July attack was well received by the Norwegian public. As he reaffirmed his government's commitment to the values of openness and tolerance in the face of adversity or intolerance his approval rating soared as high as 94%, only to decrease sharply after the22 July Commission report highlighted the laggard response time of police cost dozens of lives.[22][23]
In the2013 Norwegian parliamentary election, the Red-green coalition lost its majority in theStorting, but the Labour Party remained the largest party in the Storting. Jens Stoltenberg, who had served as prime minister for 10 of the past 13 years, remained party leader until he stepped down in 2014 after being appointedSecretary General of NATO. Later,Jonas Gahr Støre, a prominent profile in the Stoltenberg government, was chosen as new party leader on 14 June 2014.[24] In the2017 Norwegian parliamentary election, he led the party to a surprise defeat, as Labour fell 3.4 percentage points to 27.4%, and from 55 to 49 seats in theStorting, while theConservative Party managed to retain a majority along with its smaller centre-right partners.Erna Solberg, Conservative prime minister since 2013, remained in office throughout the 2017—2021 term. In the same year, the Labour Party was targeted by hackers suspected to be from Russia.[25]
In 2021, the Labour Party returned to government after eight years in opposition, following the2021 parliamentary election. The party dropped to 48 seats from the 49 it had secured in 2017, but its centre-left coalition secured a landslide victory overall, taking 100 of the 169 seats in theStorting. Theenergy crisis was the most important issue for voters.[26] Party leaderJonas Gahr Støre assumed the Norwegian premiership on 14 October 2021, at the helm of a minority coalition with theCentre Party. Soon after assuming power, the new coalition was faced with a series of crises, including theRussian invasion of Ukraine and subsequent energy price hikes. The government was criticized for its handling of these crises, and by August 2022, Støre had dropped to 31% in preferred prime minister polling, against 49% forErna Solberg, theConservative prime minister in the 2013—2021 period.[27] Meanwhile, the Labour Party hit record-low ratings in voting intention polls in late 2022, with a number of polls placing it below the 20%-mark in September 2022.[28] After theCentre Party withdrew from the cabinet, former Prime MinisterJens Stoltenberg returned asFinance Minister, a move credited with giving the Labour Party a significant boost in the polls.[29] In the2025 parliamentary election, Labour secured 28.0% of the vote and won 53 seats (an increase of five from their 2021 total), enabling the party to continue governing as a minority.[30]
The Labour Party organisation is divided into county- and municipality-level chapters, numbering approximately 2,500 associations in total.[31] Historically, the party has maintained a close association with theNorwegian Confederation of Trade Unions (LO), and until the mid-1990s, a dual-membership agreement existed between the two organizations, with LO members automatically holding (indirect) membership in the Labour Party as well. The party had about 200,500 members at its peak in 1950.[32] No records were kept about direct membership or indirect membership figures.[33] The dual-membership clause was scrapped in 1995, and that year its membership level fell to just over 72,500 from 128,000 in 1990.[34] In 1997, that figure dropped to 64,000 in 1997.[35] In 2021, the party comprised 45,553 members according to its own official website.[36] Since 2005, the party has maintained a policy requiring full gender parity at every level of organisation above ordinary membership.[37]
The supreme body of the party is the Party Congress which is held every two years. The most senior body between these congresses is the National Delegate's Meeting which is made up of the party's Executive Board and two delegates from each of the 19 counties.[31] The Executive Board itself consists of 16 elected members as well as the leadership of the party.[31] The party is headed by a single leader, while the number of deputy leaders has fluctuated between one and two in different periods. As of 2022, the party leadership is made up of leaderJonas Gahr Støre, who has held the position since 2014, and deputy leaderBjørnar Selnes Skjæran, who was first elected to the position in 2021.
The party's youth organisation is theWorkers' Youth League, and it maintains a women's wing known as the Labour Party Women's Network.[37] The party participates in elections to theSami Parliament of Norway, and work related to this has its own organisational structure with seven local groups, a bi-yearly congress, a national council and the Labour group in the Sami parliament.[38]
^Bjørnson, Øyvind (1990).På klassekampens grunn 1900-1920. Volume two ofArbeiderbevegelsens historie i Norge (in Norwegian). Oslo: Tiden. p. 276.ISBN82-10-02752-2.
^Maurseth, Per (1987).Gjennom kriser til makt 1920-1935. Volume three ofArbeiderbevegelsens historie i Norge (in Norwegian). Oslo: Tiden. p. 65.ISBN82-10-02753-0.
^Standish, Reid (3 October 2018)."The New Cold Front in Russia's Information War".Foreign Policy. Archived fromthe original on 4 October 2018.Last year, hackers targeted the country's Labour Party—currently in opposition but a staunch supporter of Norway's NATO membership—in an attack believed to have been orchestrated from Russia.
