It governed from 2005 until Labour Party leader Jens Stoltenberg resigned his cabinet on 16 October 2013 following the coalition's defeat in the 2013 elections.
The coalition was established in 2005 to constitute an alternative to the centre-right government of Kjell Magne Bondevik, and won the 2005 Norwegian parliamentary election with a slight majority.
The Labour Party had never been a member of a coalition government, except for a short interim at the end of World War II.
A good relationship between the leader of Labour Party, Jens Stoltenberg, and of the Socialist Left, Kristin Halvorsen, has been considered a major factor in forming the alliance.
[citation needed] Halvorsen was considered more pragmatic and moderate than some of her old-guard party colleagues; the Socialist People's Party, one of SV's predecessors, was established in the early 1960s as an ideological opponent to Labour's foreign policy, and it was the main opponent to NATO membership.