<\/p>\n
Norway\u2019s prime minister has crossed a line rarely even
\napproached in the country\u2019s modern political history, openly
\ncommenting on the conduct of a senior member of the royal family
\nand in doing so exposing the fragility of an unwritten
\nconstitutional convention.<\/p>\n
Jonas Gahr St\u00f8re said this week that Crown Princess Mette-Marit
\nhad shown \u201cpoor judgment\u201d in her past contacts with Jeffrey
\nEpstein, aligning himself with the royal palace\u2019s own apology but
\nnonetheless making a public intervention that many in Oslo regard
\nas without precedent. Sitting prime ministers have traditionally
\navoided any direct assessment of the behaviour of working royals,
\nregardless of controversy.<\/p>\n
The extraordinary nature of the moment was underlined by Such reactions reflect a deeply ingrained political culture. St\u00f8re was careful in his wording. He did not accuse the crown The timing of the intervention has sharpened its impact. The St\u00f8re extended the principle further by criticising a former Whether the episode marks a one-off response to an exceptional <\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source royalcentral.co.uk \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Norway\u2019s prime minister has crossed a line rarely even approached in the country\u2019s modern political history, openly commenting on the conduct of a senior member of the royal family and in doing so exposing the fragility of an unwritten constitutional convention. Jonas Gahr St\u00f8re said this week that Crown Princess Mette-Marit had shown \u201cpoor judgment\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2262019,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2262018","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-royalty"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Prime-minister-breaks-convention-with-unprecedented-criticism-of-princess.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2262018","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2262018"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2262018\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2262020,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2262018\/revisions\/2262020"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2262019"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2262018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2262018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2262018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nreaction from journalists and constitutional watchers. One
\nNorwegian reporter wrote on social media: \u201cNorway\u2019s PM Jonas
\nGahr St\u00f8re commented today that Crown Princess Mette-Marit had
\nshown poor judgment following revelations about connections to
\nEpstein. Unprecedented coming from a sitting PM about a member of
\nthe royal family. I can\u2019t recall having seen anything like
\nthis.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n
\nAlthough the monarch reigns but does not rule, ministers are
\ncareful to preserve a strict separation between elected authority
\nand the royal household. Criticism, when it arises, is usually
\nchannelled indirectly or left to the media and the palace
\nitself.<\/p>\n
\nprincess of wrongdoing and made clear that inclusion in the Epstein
\nfiles did not imply criminal conduct. Yet by publicly endorsing her
\nadmission of error, he departed from the long-standing practice of
\nministerial restraint, lending the weight of government to what
\nwould normally be treated as a private royal matter.<\/p>\n
\nrevelations about Epstein emerged just days before the start of a
\nhigh-profile criminal trial involving Mette-Marit\u2019s son, Marius
\nBorg H\u00f8iby, placing the royal family under intense public scrutiny.
\nAgainst that backdrop, the prime minister\u2019s comments appeared to
\nacknowledge \u2013 rather than deflect \u2013 public unease.<\/p>\n
\nprime minister, Thorbj\u00f8rn Jagland, for what he also described as
\npoor judgment after planning, and later cancelling, a holiday on
\nEpstein\u2019s private island. In doing so, he framed the issue not as a
\nsingular royal lapse, but as a broader failure of discernment among
\nfigures at the highest levels of public life.<\/p>\n
\nsituation or a subtle recalibration of how openly Norway\u2019s
\npolitical leaders speak about the royal family remains an open
\nquestion. For now, the significance lies less in what St\u00f8re said
\nthan in the fact that he said it at all.<\/p>\n