Will the Conservative Party choose a new leader with a trust problem?

After the poor election result last year, Erna Solberg announced that she will step down as party leader in February 2026. Ine Eriksen Soreide was nominated by the Conservative Party’s nomination committee for the leadership position and the election is scheduled to be carried out at the Conservative Party’s national convention this coming weekend. This has given the Conservative Party a small boost so that the party in January 2026 had support of 16%. But now Ine Eriksen Soreide finds herself in a conflict-of-interest predicament that can hit the Conservative Party again:

• When Soreide was foreign minister in 2019 she failed to handle a warning that young women who had assignments at the International Peace Institute (IPI) were photographed, and that these images were sent to the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. She forwarded the warning to the state prosecutor without further investigations. IPI has received 130 million kroner in support from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (UD).

• Soreide acknowledges having a friendship with Mona Juul who is charged with gross corruption linked to IPI and Jeffrey Epstein. Mona Juul has stepped down from her position as ambassador in the UD as a consequence of the charge.

• Soreide does NOT acknowledge having had a friendship with Mona Juul’s husband, Terje Rod-Larsen. The latter was head of IPI and is, like his wife, charged with gross corruption linked to IPI and Jeffrey Epstein. However, Ine Eriksen Soreide acknowledges having borrowed the couple’s apartment to celebrate her 40th birthday in 2016. This apartment is now part of the investigation as it is said to have been purchased through questionable methods involving Jeffrey Epstein.

• In her statement earlier this week Soreide would not concede that she was disqualified when the warning about IPI came in 2019, because she does not consider herself disqualified in relation to Terje Rod-Larsen, only his wife. She concedes that the UD should have investigated the matter more closely, but repeatedly emphasizes that they probably would not have found anything. A strange conclusion in relation to what we now know; many will perceive this conclusion as an attempt at manipulation on Soreide’s part.

• Ine Eriksen Soreide has two positions she claims she forgot to list as the rules require. These are in Crisis Group, which over the years has received 147 million in support from the UD, as well as the HD Centre, which has received 980 million.