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The former Finnish prime minister who was ousted from office a year after being filmed partying in raunchy home-videos has no plans to seek re-election for the foreseeable future, she revealed while promoting her new book.
Sanna Marin, 39, told the Times of London she will not run for office during Finland’s next parliamentary elections in 2027, explaining her historic but tumultuous term leading the country took a toll on her personal life she doesn’t want to repeat.
“I’m seeking a more balanced life where I can also have a personal life and be more present as a mother, or as a friend, or as a person with people that are close to me,” Marin — whose book “Hope in Action” is released Tuesday — told the Times.
“The job requires a lot,” she added. “You have to put your personal life aside and you cannot live a balanced life. I wasn’t able to spend as much time with my family as I would have wanted or as much time with my daughter as I would have wanted.”
Marin made headlines when she became Finland’s prime minister at just 34 in 2020 — making her the world’s youngest leader — and suddenly found herself steering the Nordic country through the COVID-19 pandemic and delicate diplomacy after neighboring Russia invaded Ukraine.
But headlines also found her in 2022 when she was filmed partying with friends — both in a club and at a private home — in a series of videos where she shook her hips and danced closely with a man who wasn’t her husband.
And in one of the clips somebody appeared to say “flour” in the background — which some suggested may have meant there was cocaine in the room, prompting a public call for her to take a drug test.
Marin did, and passed, but the controversy continued to follow her.
“I just wanted it to end and to continue to work,” she told the Times, saying the response from female politicians like Hilary Clinton and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — who posted videos of themselves dancing in solidarity — did little to help her mood.
The clips would dog Marin for the remainder of her time in office, and despite winning a significant amount of votes she ultimately lost her office to Finland’s conservative party in the country’s 2023 elections.
But the videos follow her still, and the strain her time in office put on her family life — Marin divorced her husband whom she has a child with in 2024 — has prompted her to abandon a return to office for the time being.
“I try to live as normal a life as I can, but still in Finland the press seems to report every single thing I do,” she said. “So it’s not fully normal, the way that I would have wanted.”
But Marin hasn’t fully left politics.
She works as a counsellor for the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, helping the former British prime minister’s organization advise other eastern European countries to join the European Union.
And while has no plans to seek office in Finland next election, Marin hasn’t ruled it out further down the road.
“I’m not seeking positions in politics right now, but maybe in the future,” she said.
