Do we like Jonas Gahr Støre?
Our score: 7 out of 10. Decent record on LGBTQ+ people and on standing up to Trump, with a couple of real stains on judgement and a government that kept losing ministers.
Støre is the career-politician's career politician: Oslo-born, a Labour adviser to Gro Harlem Brundtland, foreign minister for years, and Labour leader since 2014. He became prime minister in 2021 and won a second term in September 2025 in a tight election, leaning on four smaller left-leaning parties. Reuters put his comeback down to voters valuing his foreign-policy experience, including his dealings with Trump and the EU.
The stoush that dogged him early was money. In 2017 Dagbladet reported that his family firm, Femstø, had invested in an Oslo housing project where workers had no collective agreement, the very thing Labour campaigned against. He said he “simply wasn't aware”, and his office said he had started selling the stakes. Critics said he wasn't practising what he preached, and that same year he flip-flopped on whether he'd sell holdings that failed the Oil Fund's ethical guidelines.
Smaller blemishes: in 2019 he accepted a NOK 9,000 fine for using a handheld phone while driving, caught on an NRK documentary crew's camera, and said it was “only correct and reasonable” that he be punished. Later, Reuters reports, several ministers resigned in his government over tax affairs, undisclosed share trading and ethics breaches, and Labour sank in the polls. He survived an early-2025 leadership challenge by reshuffling and bringing in Jens Stoltenberg as finance minister.
Now the harm check. On LGBTQ+ people, the record is good: in April 2022 he apologised on behalf of the government for the persecution of gay Norwegians, saying 119 people were made criminals for their relationships. I found no words or campaigns of his against women, migrants or trans people, and no run of work with people who push harm. The honest gap is that I couldn't find a dated source on trans rights specifically or on his oil and climate record, so the pass rests on what turned up.
On the Middle East, he led Norway's May 2024 recognition of Palestinian statehood, along with Ireland and Spain, calling it support for “moderate forces”. Where you land depends on whether you read that as a principled push for two states or as a gesture that annoyed Israel. Either way it is a clear act of his own, not a vibe.
The recent bit is Trump. In January 2026 Støre, writing for himself and Finland's president, texted Trump about Greenland, Gaza and Ukraine, saying they should work to “take this down and de-escalate”. Trump's reply tied Norway not awarding him the Nobel Peace Prize to no longer feeling bound to think purely of peace. A fortnight later Støre said the Crown Princess showed poor judgement over her Epstein emails, which Epstein's 2008 conviction for child sex crimes makes an easy call.