Carl I. Hagen  Carl Ivar Hagen (born 6 May 1944) is a Norwegian politician and former Vice President of the Storting, the Norwegian parliament. He was the leader of the Progress Party from 1978 to 2006, when he stepped down in favour of Siv Jensen. Under his leadership, he was the undisputed leader and, in many ways, personally controlled its ideology and policies. Hagen has since been regarded by both political scientists, and political colleagues and rivals alike as one of the greatest politicians in Norwegian history for his ability to build a hugely successful party up from scratch and his significant impact on Norwegian politics. He has been described as the first postmodern politician in Norway. While his ideology is classical liberalism with some conservatism, his political style has been described as right-wing populist. Hagen was born to CEO Ragnar Hagen (1908–1969) and accountant Gerd Gamborg (1914-2008). He was named after his paternal grandfather, Carl, and his maternal grandfather, Ivar. He has two siblings, one younger, and one older sister. Hagen was before joining the Progress Party a passive member of the Young Conservatives, and according to him, both his parents voted for the Labour Party. According to Hagen himself and his secondary school classmates, he was relatively shy in his younger years. When he was seventeen years old, in 1961, he took work as an apprentice on the Norwegian America Line ship "MS Foldenfjord". He achieved Examen artium in 1963. In 1964, he was conscripted in the Norwegian Army, and served as an engineer soldier at Eggemoen near Hønefoss, and Maukstadmoen in Troms. After this, he left Norway for England. Originally wanting to become an engineer, he flunked mathematics in Sunderland and chose to study marketing and business studies in Newcastle instead, earning a Higher National Diploma in Business Studies in 1968. From being more reserved in his youngest days, he soon became a player in Northern English student politics. In 1967 he fought over the office of vice president of the National Union of Students against Jack Straw (later Labour Party MP and Secretary of State for Justice of the UK). Prior to dedicating his professional life to politics, Hagen was CEO at Tate & Lyle Norway from 1970 to 1974, and after falling out of parliament between 1977 and 1981, consultant of Finansanalyse from 1977 to 1979, and economic policy consultant in the oil industry from 1979 to 1981. Hagen has explained that he lost faith in the Conservative Party as an alternative to social democracy during the Per Borten cabinet (1965–1971), when taxes and the power of the state increased more than under Labour.