Since there is nothing revelatory in Hope in Action , one is left wondering what it’s all for – not just the book itself but the elaborate publicity tour, the Daily Show appearance, the book event in Hillary Clinton’s hometown of Chappaqua. What are the hopes that Marin now wants translated into action? Presumably she’s being rolled out as an... See more

Hope in Action has been savaged in the Nordic press (‘she seems to have written a book that is as bland as possible’; ‘chat GPT at its worst’). Finland’s biggest Swedish-language newspaper, Hufvudstadsbladet , compared Marin’s avowed foreign policy with that of the current President Alexander Stubb, who has advanced what he calls ‘value-based... See more

Marin’s account of her time in Finnish politics is consistently self-glorifying, from her tale of negotiating the sale of icebreakers with Trump (‘In Finland, modesty is very important...but I am comfortable saying that Finland makes the world’s best icebreakers’), to a less-than spellbinding story of negotiating the European Commission’s proposal... See more

Indeed, throughout Hope in Action , Marin invokes ‘the collective’ – sometimes to illustrate the qualities of the Finnish soul, at others to give her lust for power an egalitarian sheen.

Here, we witness what Merje Kuus describes as NATO membership’s ‘two-fold legitimation’: on the one hand it is presented as such common sense as to be beneath political debate, on the other so existential and essential as to be above it.

In the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, she won the hearts of the liberal Atlanticist set with her uncompromising stance on Russian aggression – summed up in a viral ‘mic drop’ clip in which a reporter asks Marin about the way out of the conflict. Incredulous, she replies that ‘the way out of the conflict is for Russia to leave Ukraine. That’s... See more

‘Do I really have to do this?’ is the question that Sanna Marin claims to have asked herself before becoming the youngest prime minister in Finland’s history at the age of 34. The line – which is also the title of her bloodless new memoir’s first chapter – is supposed to convey a winning reluctance and relatability, but neither is particularly... See more