Do we like them?Do we like Sanna Marin?
Our score: 8 out of 10. Decent record on people and the planet, cleared over the party saga, and the only gaps are a thin public record on some topics.
Sanna Marin became Finland's prime minister in 2019 at 34, the world's youngest at the time. She led the country through the pandemic early on, then through Russia's invasion of Ukraine, when Finland dropped its non-alignment and joined NATO. Her Social Democrats missed out at the 2023 election, and she left politics for an adviser job at the Tony Blair Institute.
Her big scandal was a party. In August 2022 a leaked video showed her dancing and singing with friends, and opposition leaders demanded a drug test after slang shouted at the party was read by some as a drug reference. She said she had used nothing but alcohol and took a test, and the Chancellor of Justice found no reason to suspect illegal conduct or neglect of duty. A topless photo from her official residence then drew a second round of criticism and an apology.
On the harm test, there's nothing nasty here. Her government passed a law letting trans people change legal gender without proof of sterilisation, which she had treated as a priority before the 2023 election. Years earlier she said it was everyone's job to identify themselves when asked about trans women. On the planet she said climate action was needed right now, and she backed Ukraine hard.
Recently she has been on the book and speaking circuit with her memoir Hope in Action. She told an interviewer she was terrified when she took the top job, and that she refused to apologise for the dancing video. The Nova Scotia talk this week covered the long war in Ukraine, climate action and the need for a political class that reflects everyone.
The gaps are honest ones. We could not find a voting record we could open, and the Tony Blair Institute job came with criticism aimed at her employer that we could not verify for her personally. She has not ruled out coming back to politics. On what we read, she's a yes.