SHE WAS THE WORLD’S YOUNGEST PREMIER, WHO REWROTE THE RULES ON WHAT A POLITICIAN COULD BE. HERE,THE FORMER PRIME MINISTER OF FINLAND TALKS ABOUT HER TUMULTUOUS TIME IN OFFICE, WHY SHE WALKED AWAY – AND PREPARING FOR HER NEXT ACT
ONE DAY LAST AUTUMN, ATTENDEES INSIDE A LECTURE HALL AT the University of California, Los Angeles, sat eagerly awaiting the arrival of Sanna Marin, the former prime minister of Finland, who became the world’s youngest premier, male or female, when she took office in 2019 at the age of 34. Tickets sold out in two hours; there was an overflow room and a Zoom link for those who weren’t lucky enough to snag a spot.
‘It was like getting tickets to see the Rolling Stones,’ says Leslie Johns, professor of political science and law, and associate director of UCLA’s Burkle Center for International Relations, which sponsored the lecture. The crowd was especially excited to hear Marin speak about how she led her country to join Nato in the wake of Russia’s war in Ukraine. ‘How many people do that in their lifetime, let alone their mid-thirties?’ Johns says, marvelling.
It’s true: Sanna Marin is about the closest thing global politics has to a rock star. She’s worn leather jackets to meet with fellow world leaders and has one million followers on Instagram, where her feed features snaps of her posing with celebrities and partying with friends at music festivals.
In her nearly four years as prime minister, she was praised for her deft handling of Covid, climate change and the war. Yet despite her accomplishments, outside of pol-sci circles Marin is known mostly for her dance moves, following a leaked video in August 2022 that showed her and her friends dancing at a private party. In preparing this article over the past few months, I’ve told people here and there about what I’m working on, and everyone, from friends to Uber drivers to the jewellery security guards on set at the photo-shoot for this story, said something to the effect of, ‘Oh yeah, the partying prime minister.’
At first, I thought it was a tragedy that this history-making politician was best known for the sexism-laced scandals she’s weathered over how she dressed and socialised. But then I watched how Marin carried on after each headline-making turn: she was still living her life like a normal thirtysomething woman, uncensored and unashamed. Before long, I realised that in refusing to be anything other than exactly who she is, while continuing to do her job with aplomb, Marin was in effect proving to the world, and all of its women, that there’s room for them in the political arena, too. And that’s not a bad thing to be known for at all.
‘This is why I didn’t want to change myself,’ Marin tells me on the rooftop o
