On March 5, 2017, an era came to an end in Finland.

For twenty years, Timo Soini had led the Finns Party, previously known as the True Finns, a party he had built from the ground up. Under his stewardship the party rose from the fringes to almost 20 percent in the polls, garnering international renown as an early example of European success for right-wing populism. He had even managed to bring the Finns into government in 2015 — but less than two years on from that achievement he was stepping down.

The move ended months of speculation that Soini might be ousted by the anti-immigration movement he had fostered, one that had grown restless under the constraints of government. Having promised to cut immigration and bolster the welfare state, the Finns’ social media outlets are now mobbed by former supporters castigating the party for introducing budget and wage cuts and failing to prevent thirty thousand asylum seekers reaching Finland in 2015.