Finnish-born Niina Kaariniemi helping British Tory leader

A Conservative with an admiration for Margaret Thatcher

David Cameron

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By Anssi Miettinen in Birmingham
     
      "He is an extremely charming man and the perfect person to make this country a great place to live once again. He has the right policies, the right ideas, and I believe he will make a terrific Prime Minister. And as I'm sure you know, he is going to be Prime Minister."
      Niina Kaariniemi, 40, does not have a single critical word for the British Conservative Party chairman David Cameron, the leader of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition in Parliament.
     
Then again, one would hardly expect to hear any negative comments, for Kaariniemi is not merely a confirmed Tory supporter, but also one of Cameron's political aides, in her role as a regional coordinator for Women2Win (W2W), a Conservative group that encourages more women to become MPs.
      Kaariniemi, who admires a former female champion of the Conservatives in former PM Margaret Thatcher, will also be standing as a Conservative candidate in next summer's elections to the European Parliament.
      "David thought it was a good idea and encouraged me to stand. So I decided to try, why not?" says the politically-driven single mother of two.
     
Finnish-born Kaariniemi got herself into the inner circles of the Conservative Party in part by chance.
      She lives in Witney, in Oxfordshire, which happens to be Cameron's own hometown and the location of his parliamentary constituency. Cameron was elected to Westminster from here for the first time in 2001.
      Niina, who read European Studies at Coventry University as a mature student, has been assisting the party's local councillors for seven years now.
     
In that time, the unknown Cameron has become first an MP and then the leader of his party after the Conservatives again failed to unseat Labour at the 2005 general election.
      Cameron and his 40-something colleagues have since set about reshaping the Conservatives, and making the party once more acceptable to UK voters as a party of government.
      "It has to be said that David Cameron hasn't changed one bit since he became party chairman. He still has very much to do with the hands-on stuff with ordinary people, and he is always reachable."
     
Political opponents have characterised Cameron as an Old Etonian surrounded by others who went to that elite public school, as a "smooth-talking salesman", and have branded his politics as being devoid of any real content.
      "That is because they are afraid of him", Kaariniemi says confidently.
      In her view, the new leader of the [opposition] Liberal Democrats Nick Clegg, for instance, is trying to ape Cameron's style. The approach of wooing the middle class and the British political centre also includes parading one's family prominently in the public eye.
      Kaariniemi also feels that the Labour Party is trying for its part to take on board Conservative policies in many areas, "but is failing miserably at it".
      "In the last ten years the standard of education and health care in this country has gone downhill fast and we are deeply in debt. People are demanding a change."
     
One of the key tenets of the Conservative Party leadership - and one that is much-disputed-over - is that of the "broken society" in the UK; that the society and the sense of community has become shattered. What does this mean in essence?
      "Just walk down those streets over there late at night, and you will understand what it means. We have to have more control. Why do we have children out on our streets committing crimes? Why do we have broken homes and broken families?"
     
In Kaariniemi's view, the Labour government, in office since Tony Blair swept into No. 10, Downing Street in 1997, has poured money into education, into health care, and into social welfare programmes with gay abandon and without any meaningful results.
      The Conservatives and Kaariniemi have a traditional remedy for youth problems in the society: a return to strict discipline.
      "When I go to my children's school, I always remind the teachers that if my kids behave badly, they should be punished and as far as I am concerned they can be punished. I believe in traditional teaching methods."
      Kaariniemi charges that the Labour government has taken away the powers of teachers and the police and at the same time stripped them of their authority.
      "Teachers live in fear that they will get taken to court."
     
Niina Kaariniemi's conservatism is inherited from her teacher parents.
      She spent her early childhood in Western Finland and moved with her parents to Sweden at the age of nine. By the time she was in her teens, she was already active in Moderata samlingspartiet, the Swedish centre-right liberal conservative party.
     
This speaker of six languages settled in England in 1988, when she met her ex-husband. Her children are 8 and 16 years.
      Kaariniemi says that despite her foreign background she has been welcomed in Britain with open arms, and a great deal more warmly than in Sweden, where she never really felt comfortable.
      She does admit that it has not always been that easy to be a worker for the Tory Party.
      "But now at my kids' school the other parents have finally started to come around, and to encourage me. They are now saying that we should kick [Prime Minister] Gordon Brown out of Downing Street."
     
Kaariniemi reports that British politicians are more than interested to learn about the Nordic social models.
      She has been playing her part in this in getting Conservatives to learn from the Scandinavians.
      "David Cameron is taking an extremely close look at the Swedish education system and at what we could learn from it in Britain. I've been trying to tempt him into going to Finland, too. We'll see if anything comes of it."
     
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 5.10.2008

More on this subject:
 Kaariniemi unlikely to "do a Vatanen" in Euro elections

ANSSI MIETTINEN / Helsingin Sanomat
anssi.miettinen@hs.fi